Want your audience to actually act on your message? Here’s a list of words that will help you.

But before you get them, grasshopper, take a moment to learn about the man who made this sort of list possible. A friend who works at global direct marketing agency Wunderman told me about its founder, Lester Wunderman, the 88-year old godfather of direct marketing.

You know the little scissors that go on the dotted line on newspaper coupons? Lester invented that, or so they tell me. You can picture the scene. New York in the late thirties, in a smoky meeting room full of old-school well dressed ad men:

Boss
Dammit, we put this coupon in the Sunday paper and we only got three back! And they all had ragged edges like they’d been torn out by a goddamn animal! These new dotted lines just aren’t working.

Wunderman
They don’t know what to do with them, boss. But here’s a little graphic I’ve thought up that says “Scissors are what you need to get this baby out of the paper”.

Boss
Wunderman, you’re a genius! I’m giving you the entire Pillsbury Doughboy account!

Thus an entire industry was born. Direct marketing people have much to teach us in delivering any type of message that aims to influence people.

RESULTS MEASURED BY EXPERTS

Unlike people who do regular ads or presentations, these guys are absolute scientists when it comes to measuring what effect their message has on their audience. Each week, they live or die by how many people phone up or register on-line or whatever.

They run an ad, or send a letter. They measure it. Then they change it slightly – a few words, or a different offer, or a design tweak – then measure it again. And so on, forever. So each ad is a refinement of an ongoing experiment to get people to buy stuff.

As you can imagine, they’ve put decades of study into which words ring the cash register. The headline words that attract people’s eye when they’re reading the Sunday paper. And equally importantly, the words that translate interest into a purchase.

Here’s the Top 15

1. You
2. Save
3. Money
4. Results
5. Guarantee
6. Love
7. Easy
8. Safety
9. Discovery
10. Health
11. Guarantee
12. Proven
13. Free
14. Warning
15. Important

Cheesy? All together in a group, certainly. And obviously some are easier than others to fit into your topic, but there are always a few that will suit you.

WILL IT WORK FOR YOU?

Sprinkle some of them through your next presentation, both in your speech and your speaker support graphics. You’ll be surprised how well they work. You’ll notice the headline for this post is uses this approach, and you’re still reading.

“But surely the rules have changed since ye olden days of direct mail advertising,” you might argue. “People today are sophisticated, media savvy and need subtler methods of persuasion.”

A good point, but people are still subconsciously attracted to those words, despite the ‘hard sell’ vibe they project. People can be armed with all the logic and knowledge in the world, but their actions still go in the opposite direction. Exhibit A: smokers. Exhibit B: buyers of anti-ageing products that we all know don’t work.

IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE

As Lester says, focusing on the word ‘You’ is a vital persuasion skill. If you want them to act on your message, it isn’t about the product, or your company, it’s about the audience and what your product will do for them. Communicate with each customer or prospect as an audience of one, he says.

As for Lester himself, he’s still alive and sending out messages to the troops. And despite the no-frills nature of direct response writing, anyone who carries around quotes from Rilke and Wordsworth to inspire his company’s commercial work gets our respect.

Tags: audience of one, coupon scissors, direct response, Lester Wunderman, message, Pillsbury Doughboy account, Presentations, Rilke, Wordsworth

Posted by Ian on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.