Repetition is a good copywriting strategy

I won't repeat that here, because I already make that joke in the newsletter

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going?

Let’s see, first things first: if you haven’t gone to the Sphere in Las Vegas, you should go to the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Today in Gobbledy:

• Repetition can be useful way to get people to remember things.

• Repetition can be useful way to get people to remember things.

• Repetition can be useful way to get people to remember things.

• Ha ha ha.

• The name of your company matters so much less than most people think.

• Kojak.

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Repetition Repetition Repetition

I’ve mentioned here a number* of times that perhaps, years ago, I may have been a one of those co-workers that you would describe from time-to-time as “difficult.”

(*that number is 83)

As in, “Oh, crap, I have to call that difficult gentleman in eCommerce and get into an argument about some nonsense.”

While I would be thinking, “I’m always right, I really wish this person would just accept that.”

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ll probably note my approach was unproductive.

I mention this because while at Hilfiger I had an argument about email marketing subject lines that I thought I’d discuss here.

And when I say I had “an argument” I mean that I was constantly arguing and rarely listening and I’m actually not sure what’s worse, a work asshole who is like that, or a reformed work asshole who wants to tell you about how terrible they used to be.

We were a brand that put stuff on sale, and when you put stuff on sale - here’s a useful tidbit if you ever work in retail - you should tell your customers that the stuff is on sale. They’re far more likely to purchase the stuff if they’re aware that it is cheaper than it used to be.

You’re welcome.

When you want to tell your customers that your stuff is on sale you need to create an email, and you need to come up with a subject line, and the subject lines were always a source friction because, like many apparel sellers, we were a brand with a pretty clear visual identity and a pretty un-clear written identity.

Which meant that if we wanted to create a subject line, there was really no way for us to know if the subject line was “on brand” or “off brand” unless someone on the brand team made that decision.

The blame in that case really fell on all of us on both the marketing team and the eCommerce team for not assigning someone the task of coming up with copy guidelines (seems obvious in hindsight).

As readers of this newsletter might guess, I leaned toward trying to be clever (or “clever” as the case may be), sometimes using puns (maybe not clever, now that I’m typing that), while the brand team favored a much more straightforward approach.

For example, when we were selling men’s pajamas that had a waffled texture (while the photos of the men in the pajama pants left little to the imagination), I suggested the subject line “Bulgin’ Waffles.”

That, apparently, was not on brand.

The biggest issue we had, though, was around our sale emails and the subject lines associated with those emails. We would generally run a season-ending sale for a while, then after a couple of weeks add another 20% off the sale price.

We recommended using “Our sale is on sale” as the subject line (I know…we had to pump out a lot of emails) and just moving on with our lives.

We received feedback that that message was “off brand,” leading me to be extremely level-headed and reasonable and emailing the brand team back a dozen screenshots of our competitors using the same subject line.

(Which, now that I think about it, is all the more reason we should NOT have used that…oops!)

We ended up changing the subject line to something gripping like, “Additional 20% off sale,” which I’m sure got people super excited.

Though I guess the joke is on someone, because I literally just looked on the email marketing archive Milled.com (super useful) and here’s their email from 3 days ago:

(I don’t know why “off” is lowercase and “Sale” is uppercase.)

I win!

Anyway, I was thinking about all of that when I received this email from breezy suddenly-every-middle-aged-guy-I-know-is-wearing-it apparel brand Faherty:

I really need to know - was it originally “SALE SALE SALE SALE SALE” and someone on the brand team Slacked someone on the email team saying, “I’m not sure if you missed the brand guidelines, but we can only say “SALE” 3 times in a row.”

This is a silly, small example but using repeated words or phrases in your copy can be very effective.

If you were alive in 2007, you may remember these incredibly annoying commercials for a product called HeadOn:

(It’s just a voiceover of someone saying, “HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead” over and over.)

Everyone hated this ad and ridiculed its stupidity and here I am 17 years later and I can tell you exactly how to use this product. Which product? HeadOn. How do you use it? Apply directly to the forehead.

Here’s a fun fact about HeadOn (which you apply directly to the forehead.) It was a homeopathic headache remedy, and earlier versions of the ads told you that it was a headache remedy. But then the stupid FTC with their stupid rules made them change it because it (I’m making airquotes) had no evidence that it provided any relief from headaches.

A weaker brand would’ve bawled their little snowflake eyes out and stopped advertising.

But not HeadOn.

No, they just removed all mention of what the product does and flipped it around to just tell you how to use it.

Nothing about the benefits. Nothing about how it works.

Copy rules are meant to be broken. We have lots of preconceived notions about what should go on our homepage, and how we should talk about our products.

But there are other ways to do it, and while I don’t expect a software company to actually just repeat one thing about their product, I also don’t think it’s the worst idea I’ve ever had…here’s a mockup of what that could look like at cybersecurity something something (and almost-completed $23 billion Google acquisition) Wiz:

I think we’ve seen worse websites, no? (Maybe no.)

You may notice that each week I mention that I work with companies to improve their messaging. Yes, I do that.

I thought this week I’d try a different approach and sponsor my own newsletter. Yes, this newsletter is sponsored by me. I offer a 2-day workshop that will transform your messaging so prospects (and board members) will actually understand what you do.

And this gets results - not just, “oh that sounds good!” results - actual business results in the form of higher clickthroughs to your Contact Us and Request a Demo forms. A recent client shared the results of the new messaging we created, and the clickthrough improvement was well into the double digits (not a promise you’ll get that, but clearly it’s possible!)

I’m happy to tell you more - here’s a link to set up time to chat.

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What’s In a Name?

A quick aside about Wiz…

One thing I’ve noticed about people starting companies is that they get very, very, very caught up in the question of what to name the company. Sometimes they make up something abstract (Affeeniac) and sometimes it’s something very concrete (BestCyberSecurity, LLC).

And then, when they’ve named the company, three years later they grow very tired of the name and they say, “that name really gave the wrong impression of what our company is about, so we’ve paid a branding agency $400,000 and now we shall call it Aclarius. Aclarius is much better than BestCyberSecurity.”

I have long contended that the name of the company literally does not matter at all, and when I’ve brought this up - even in places where everyone outside of the marketing team thinks that marketing is a waste of everyone’s brain space - people will yell at me and tell me how wrong I am.

And then I will say something like, “Well, tell that to the very, very successful folks selling airport scanners at the Analogic corporation.”

Oddly, this doesn’t scan the one thing you’d think it would scan. Thank God.

The almost-very-very-very-wealthy team at Wiz has also proven my thesis to be true. Wiz has been a defunct electronics store in New York City (The Wiz); the fake Wiz character that appeared on Seinfeld; the name of a movie musical featuring a once-revered-then-ostracized-and-then-revered-despite-some-terrible-terrible-behavior Michael Jackson easing on down the road (and a Broadway musical); half of the name of cheese-in-a-can; a euphemism for urination; and, with an added ‘Z,’ the name of a low-cost airline based in Central Europe.

And now Wiz is a company where each of the two founders will walk away with $2 billion.

If you were wondering, he’s the Wiz and nobody beats him.

Coming up with a new name is super fun (at least relative to lots of other stuff you have to do in marketing), but it won’t make a difference in whether prospects buy your product or how much someone pays you to buy your company (and the research backs this up.). Sorry :(

(But it’s fun! No apologies for that! If given the choice between deciding whether Zinial, Forbit, or Sprack represents the cultural values of my company better than Personalize.ai, or spending hours coming up with an email sequence to invite people to a webinar, you’re goddamned right I’ll talk about Sprack.)

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You’re Welcome, Part 7

I’d guess that the readers of Gobbledy are equally divided into two camps:

Camp 1: People who hated the video I shared of Liberace singing ‘Feelin’ Groovy’ while dancing with a bunch of “young folks.”

Camp 2: People who wish I’d just write a newsletter of amazing stuff like that.

Well, Camp 1 people, yer outta luck.

Behold:

Kojak’s Telly Savalas speaking the lyrics to Bread’s “If” while - for reasons that aren’t clear - a woman who looks like someone chatgpt’d “create a fake member of Abba” looks on as he performs.

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As always, thanks for reading to the end. Here’s my Calendly link if you’d like to chat for 25 minutes about anything - It’d say 75% of the calls I do start with the person saying, “I always wondered if anyone clicks on that.” They do! I had a great conversation this week about a side project someone was working on, and how they could message it a way that resonated. Fun!