Ask any car salesman what it means when somebody takes a test drive.
You’ll be told that once behind the wheel, the prospect will probably buy the car.
This is why a copywriter should try to get the prospect inside the copy and into the product. Sometimes this is as easy as offering a demonstration, or sending a sample. Basic stuff.
But sometimes it’s not so easy.
And when a copywriter can’t get the prospect physically involved with the product, the basis of involvement needs to shift. We need to move the prospect into an imagined relationship with the product.
We need to write the copy so the prospect sees herself using it. She imagines the positive outcome and she internalizes the benefits, so that her belief builds to the point she has another reason to support her decision to take action and make the purchase.
When I am faced with this challenge, I often think about Bill Johnson.
Today, Bill Johnson is a virtual vegetable, the saddest kind of story, brain damaged from a skiing accident.
But in 1984, Bill Johnson was a hero. The first American to win gold in the Olympics Men’s Downhill. He was an unlikely hero, a troubled kid who channeled his energy into skiing.
What intrigued me about Bill Johnson went beyond his ability to put his hell raising behind him. It was his ability to follow his coaches’ visualization training.
He was highly adept at creating precise mental images of the run at Sarajevo, after his practices, seeing himself making every necessary move and every adjustment, and then replaying these images over and over.
When Bill Johnson skied down Bjelasnica Mountain in February of 1984, he had already done it in his mind hundreds of times. No indecisiveness shaving fractions of seconds off his time. His visualization, harnessed to his skill and his determination, made him a champion.
When a piece of copy is written so that the prospect can visualize a beneficial outcome from using the product, the same sort of thing happens.
But rarely is copy written this way.
Rarely is the prospect invited to imagine, and then, given all the tools necessary to stretch the imagination from vague thoughts to specific engagement.
Technology doesn’t do this. Words do.
Words carefully chosen and structured to do what Bill Johnson did on Bjelasnica Mountain in 1984.
