If you walk around outside and have a little look around…
What do you see? Especially if you’re in a built up area where thousands of people rush around…
You see a sprawling, drooling horde of sleepwalker.
Now if you tie this into every social media platform. We are living in an era of absolute and undeniable mass hypnosis.
If you likened the algorithm to a swinging pocket watch. You’ll notice that everyone’s pupils are blown wide open and their brains are smoothed out into a frictionless gray paste by endless and mind numbing scroll of the feed…
So, when you sit down to write some good old fashioned direct response ad copy. You can’t even call yourself a regular writer now. You have to wear another layer and at this rate, you’re going to become the next great mentalist of our time. You have to try and hack the mind that is currently trapped social media induced coma.
The question that’ll come up though is, how do we use these seemingly dark arts, pacing, the leading and psychological framing without becoming one of those parasitic tapeworms that consume everything?
How do we sell our art/services ethically?
Now I’ve been on an old mentalism/magic binge lately. Collecting old books and essays from the greats about their craft.
Think about the chaotic and brilliant sleight of hand by a guy like Lennart Green…
When he sits down at the table. He is the most unprofessional and unpolished performer you’ll ever see. But his craft is immense. Arguably one of the best in the world. He uses your own assumptions against you.
He drops cards, he acts clumsy and he breaks the rhythm of what your brain expects to see. He controls your attention by snapping the pattern.
Most people call it a pattern interrupt and that’s what it is. You use a headline or an opening hook that is so jarring, visceral, and weirdly honest that it literally jolts their prefrontal cortex back online.
If you look at mentalism, you direct attention away from the secret. If you’re looking at selling ethically. You have to direct their attention away from their own self-destructive habits and onto that gross and gaping wound they need to heal. You have to show them the bleeding.
I’ve noticed in a lot of ads lately that everything is so sanitised and boring. Especially the “in real life” stuff you see at say bus stops or on TV or whatever. The people/agencies who have written them did it purely for the accolades of writing a smart looking ad. They do it for the agency awards and kudos and other irrelevant bullshit.
Ads need to slap you in the face and make you aware of your problem and give you a clear cut way of solving the problem.
BUT this next bit is important…
You don’t manipulate them into buying garbage they don’t need.
(If you do, you are a monster and I hope a badger eats your face)
You use the psychological levers to force them to look at a product or service that will actually fix their life. You use the hypnosis to walk them out of the burning building.
Empathy is your strongest mentalism trick. If you can describe their pain better than they can, their wet, fleshy brain automatically assumes you have the cure…
Persuasion is just a fancy word for hacking the human meat computer and these 3 small-ish principles and ideas will help you write some really good stuff to sell your own warez.
Hell, if you want to write for others in your niche then this will help too.
Stephen Walker.