The Writers Workshop Learn How To Say It Well

The great business philosopher Jim Rohn said it best in his lecture about communication. He was talking about personal communication - not about advertising - but the principle holds true. He says to be a master communicator all you've got to do is follow this simple three-step process: first, have something good to say; second, say it well; third, say it often.

In terms of advertising, here's what that means: having something good to say means you've innovated your business sufficiently so you have something unique that's worth advertising. Saying it well has to do with taking what you do well and saying it in your advertising in such a way that it gets people to notice and take action.

Here's what you need to know about saying it well: advertising gives you great leverage on your dollars invested. The words you use and the way you use them in your ads can make all the difference between an ad that works and an ad that fails. An ad that makes you money or an ad that costs you money. Those ads you're going to be running will cost you the same amount of money regardless of how well you say it. If you say it well and your ads make you rich, the price of the ads remain constant. If you say it crummy and go broke, the cost of the ads still doesn't change. That's why we're going to spend so much time on the writer's workshop and teach you how to say it well - so you can take advantage of the upside of the leverage advertising offers you.

I don't know if you're planning on writing your own ads or not. Maybe you just want to learn how to evaluate whether or not your ad agency is doing a good job. Maybe you'd like to make useful suggestions to the people who write your ads. Or maybe you are the one responsible for putting it all together for your company. If you're responsible for the results of your company's advertising, you'll need to know how to effectively write your ads.

Use Words To Create Mental Pictures In People's Minds: Remember this one tidbit out of this program and it will be worth the time you've invested. The mind thinks in pictures. Not words, not ideas, not concepts, not abstracts. In pictures. Hard to believe? Let me give you an example. For a moment, think of a killer whale. Okay, what came to your mind? The words and letters k-i-l-l-e-r w-h-a-l-e? No, of course not. You had a picture of a killer whale instantly pop into your mind. Now, think of the Eiffel Tower. What happened? Big, tall, pointy tower picture pops into your mind. The reason your mind throws a picture on your mental canvas is because you don't think in words, you think in pictures.

Okay, you say those weren't fair examples because they were both objects. It makes sense you would think of an object by picturing the object, but you're saying that you probably wouldn't think of something abstract in a picture. Well, let's see if that's true or not. Here's the next exercise: think of the word FAME. What happened? Did you think of the letters F-A-M-E? Or did your mind paint a mental picture of something instead? Maybe it was a flashback to the old movie Fame. Or maybe you got a picture in your mind of a famous person or even a collage of famous people. If so, who was it? A famous athlete? A movie star? Maybe your mental picture shows the flashbulbs that come from being photographed a thousand times by the media or maybe you saw your picture on the cover of a magazine. It's different for everybody, but for everybody it's a picture. Let's try another: how about the word POLITICS? What picture did you get? What about the word RELIGION? Think for a second. What about the word CHARMING? SWEET? EVIL? FLEXIBLE? Get the picture? Your mind thinks in pictures

So the next logical question you have is SO WHAT? What does that have to do with advertising? The answer: EVERYTHING. As an advertiser, your job is to create a mental picture in the minds of your prospects that will get them to: a) pay attention to your ads, b) become very interested in what you're selling, and c) take action. You've got to be the artist that paints the picture in the brain. So you might think, "Hey, great. If the mind uses pictures, then we'll just stick a bunch of pictures in our ads and that will do the trick. After all, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? We'll put pictures in our ad that illustrate the points we're trying to make and everyone will understand and take action." Well, actually, that's not exactly true. Here's the problem with pictures in advertisements, generally speaking: your interpretation of a picture and my interpretation of a picture might not be the same thing. The picture might be worth a thousand words...the question is which thousand words?

So now you're wondering...which is it? Pictures or no pictures? Here's the key: you can use words to create mental pictures that will get attention and tell your story far more effectively than any illustration or photograph ever could. You've got to become a skilled wordsmith that can use words to paint pictures on the mental canvas. Let me give you a few examples.

First, let me tell you about a company that makes video game cabinets. A video game cabinet is basically the wooden box with a TV monitor that those games you see in the arcades are housed in. One of the biggest problems with the cabinets is that they have to endure a lot of abuse. Think about it: they've got 13 year old kids pounding on them all day long for months and years on end. The part of the cabinet particularly vulnerable to wear and tear is the control panel - the part about waist high on the cabinet where all the buttons, knobs, and joysticks are. Well, this company had engineered a cabinet with several reinforcements on the control panel that made it very durable and extremely resistant to breaking even under the most abusive conditions. It was called the HS-27. People in the industry all knew what an HS-27 was. Okay, play consultant now: write an ad extolling the merit of the HS-27 video cabinet with its new, improved, reinforced control panel. What would you say? Remember, your job is to paint a mental picture for the reader. So what would you write?

If you ask around the factory, you will find out HOW they tested the durability of the control panel: they simulated the worst punishment the control panel could ever possibly face - they had somebody literally stand on top of it and jump up and down repeatedly. And just to make sure that the test was true, they had their service manager - Mike, who weighed in at 272 pounds - be the one who did the jumping. Ah ha! There's the idea. Are you already starting to get a mental picture built in your mind? The headline was then written in big, bold letters. "We Had The Biggest, Fattest Guy We Could Find Jump Up And Down On Our HS-27 Control Panel For 12 Minutes...Just To Make Sure It Could Endure Any Punishment Your Customers Could Dish Out."

Did that headline put a mental picture in your mind? Of course it did. You saw this picture in your mind of a big fat guy jumping up and down on a video game cabinet and the cabinet standing up to the test. And here's the best part: every person who heard or read that headline got to paint the mental picture using their own images and scenes which makes the picture more vivid and more believable. The company was a little concerned about using the "Fat Guy" ad. They thought it wouldn't be politically correct, you know, to talk about a fat guy. What if people complain? I'm telling you, the words FAT GUY just have the ability to create a certain picture in the mind that no other words can. The results proved it worked: the ad generated a ton of attention and skyrocketed the sales of the HS-27 video game cabinet.

Here are a few more examples. A company that does pre-employment screening and background checks wanted an ad that emphasized how effective they were at screening out bad employees. They debated about what people really wanted from a pre-employment screening company. "They want the checks done fast, they want the checks done accurately, etc." But what people want can all be summed up in one headline: "Now You Can Avoid Hiring Weirdos, Losers, and Lunatics." The sub-headline said there was a secondary benefit of "and get all the information you need in just six hours or less." That one definitely puts a pretty graphic picture in your mind.

How about this for creating a picture in the mind? "We Go The Extra Mile For Our Clients." Okay, that was a trick; I hope you caught it! "We go the extra mile for our clients" leaves your brain looking for something concrete to grasp onto. It leaves you visually numb. It does a poor job of creating a mental picture.

How about this one: let's take the example of a photography studio specializing in children's portraits and senior pictures for high school students. For the last several years, they had done what just about every other photographer on the face of the planet did when it came to advertising. They sent out an oversized postcard with a bunch of pictures of beautiful people on the front with some kind of boring headline like, "Only the Best" or "Capture Your Style" or something that was trying to convey the message of "Come get your photo take here and you'll look beautiful, too." The only problem with that kind of advertising is that it DOES NOT create any mental pictures. And the actual photos on the postcard don't mean anything since the person looking at them fully expects the promotional picture would look good. Even a horrible photographer has a few decent shots he shows his prospects. So instead, one photographer sent a postcard that contained only the following words: "You've Got The Ugliest Kids I've Ever Seen In My Life," with the sub-headline "That's What They'll Say If You Get Caught Using The Wrong Photographer."

See how effective that is? See how that creates a vivid picture - a mental impression - in the mind? That's the power of mental pictures. And you can create them for your product or service too.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't use actual pictures effectively in an advertisement. You can. It's been done lots of times...but here's the key: usually the pictures are used in tandem with words. Why? The words are what create the MENTAL picture that describes the actual picture. Here's an example: if you do a lot of meetings or seminars, you get a lot of solicitations from meeting facilities. There's also a magazine called Meeting News. It's one of those free subscription magazines with a bunch of shallow, token articles existing solely as an advertising vehicle for resorts and meeting facilities. That being the case, you'd think the advertisers would be trying really hard to say just the right things to make the phones ring. I mean, it's a competitive environment in that magazine; almost every ad is selling the exact same thing: meeting space.

There was a full-page ad for Hilton Resorts dominated by a huge photograph. It was an aerial view of a big green lawn with a dog that had dug what looked like about a half a dozen holes. The dog was currently situated near the middle of the page and was in the process of digging another hole. Remember I said earlier that while a picture is worth a thousand words, the important thing is which thousand words? So what does the hole-digging dog say to you? What conclusion do you draw? Fortunately, Hilton was good enough to provide a headline to try to clarify. The headline read, "At Hilton Direct, we'll find the perfect meeting location for you, whether it's 2,000 miles away or in your own backyard."

Oh, okay...the doggie's looking for the perfect location to bury his bone, I mean, to plan his meeting. Does this make sense to you? The picture does a horrible job of getting to the point - which, by the way, still hasn't been discovered. After a thorough reading of the ad's text, you can find the point. Buried way down deep in the copy is this tidbit: they have over 500 properties all over the country which, I guess, ensures there's one near you and by making just one call, you could presumably make your meeting plans for anywhere. So here's the question: why didn't they just say that? Maybe they should have used the headline "Only One Resort Lets You Compare And Price Out 523 Different Meeting Facilities Nationwide With Just One Easy Phone Call. That's Hilton Direct." Yes, there are probably better headlines they could use, but it's better than the digging dog.

The place to paint the picture is in the mind. Not on the paper. Don't draw a conclusion from the examples here that you have to use an inflammatory headline like the Fat Guy one or the Ugly Kids one or the Don't Hire Losers one...although it can certainly help. Those are just examples to prove the point about creating mental pictures. Here's what you need to know: Your ability to use words to create pictures in the minds of listeners will greatly enhance your chances of success. Most of the ads out there don't effectively create mental pictures. Instead, they unthinkingly spew out verbal garbage. Instead of mental pictures, they create mental numbness. Why would they do that? Don't waste your money that way.


The Writers Workshop Learn How To Say It Well - To learn more about this author, visit Ernst Marsig's Website.

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