“Don’t tell her your courteous, son. Open her door.”
In other words, don’t tell her, son. Show her.
Welcome to the the fertile fields of ad writing. I was cleaning up a presentation on ad writing that once provided a dozen meaty, actionable tips for making your ads more memorable. It’s since grown to an eighteen pack, but in both presentations one of my big star performers is: Show. Don’t tell.
Consider this television ad I use in the workshop/keynote presentation:
If you’re familiar with eBay, you’ll immediately note how well the ad captures the visceral sensation of the anticipatory moments leading up to the ad’s climax. We’ve lived those moments and their subsequent celebrations. We know those feelings. We’ve connected emotional dots and built our own bridge between the product/service (eBay) and sensations with which we’re familiar.
If you’re not familiar with eBay, first – welcome to earth. Please – make yourself comfortable. Second – bet you can’t wait to get you summa that, eh? You don’t yet know exactly what it is, but how fun does THAT look?
Turning to you, your copy, your product, your service your business: What’s the payoff? What’s the result/benefit of using your product or service? Show me that. Dramatize that.
And get set to watch new customers jump for joy.
3 … 2… 1 …
Oh, and PS … tomorrow I’ll show you my favorite example of showing v. telling from the past ten years. The major difference from today being that we’ll be counting up instead of down … 1 … 2 … 3 …
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