November 2011 - Otis Regrets... or not

Marketing in an Optum haze

Optum is a new entity cobbled together out of previously separate entities for medical billing, online pharmacy, health newsletters and other services to “help navigate the health care system”. The name was trademarked in February 2011, but I just came across it last week in an expensive inside front cover spread in the New Yorker prescribing “to improve the health care system from A to Z, start with O”.

The pharma industry has a way of coming up with invented names that sound like they mean something but actually don’t. “Abilify” and “Boniva” being a couple of my favorites. I expect the naming committee at this company must have had a chest bump moment after they realized they could create a new word simply by chopping the middle out of “optimum”.

But I think there are reasons that “Optum” remained available long after “Humana” and “Zoloft” had been gobbled up. First, two-syllable words that end in “um” tend to sound mundane, downbeat and occasionally risible when spoken, instead of soaring. Try pablum, problem and yes, rectum.

Second, as we’ve mentioned previously, the lazy or hurrying reader often misplaces letters and sees in one word another similar word that isn’t there. In this case my eye immediately placed the missing “i” where “t” was written in the ad, making for a most unfortunate result (at least for a medical company).

Words have the power to sell, but also the potential to hurt your marketing efforts. When one of those words is the name of your company, that’s an extra big problem.

Don’t be that guy!

Check out “that guy” on Urban Dictionary. It’s a meme for our YouTube centric times. Whether you’re Rick Perry who can’t count to three or the graduate who still attends high school dances, now your boneheaded moves are up for review and we can all shudder, and deliver bromantic advice, by saying “don’t be that guy”.

Another phrase which I thought was local in upstate NY is “I like me some….” It’s usually delivered in a self-deprecating way, as in “I have a Ph.D in Nanotechnology but I still like me some wings with Buffalo sauce.” A scholarly article suggests it is from the south but that’s in general referring to usage of an extra and unnecessary pronoun. I say “I like me some…” is a 2011 way to endorse something while simultaneously disavowing in case it turns out not to be cool.

Language is a moving target. These phrases might make it into long term usage or they might be the next “you’ve got mail”. (Remember? If you don’t, thanks for reading an oldster’s blog, young padawan.)

My father was a book editor and we used to argue, almost to the point of coming to blows, about the placement of periods within quotes. As in, Steve Jobs turned to Bill Gates and said, “My OS is better than your OS”. I say the period goes outside the quote unless we know that the speaker delivered a complete sentence vs. a phrase quoted out of context. My father said that the period always goes within the quotes, regardless, because otherwise it was impossible for the typesetter to keep track of the tiny slivers of lead.

Now that type is set on the computer, we can evolve. I am claiming the “acceptable usage” if not the “correct” badge on this one. And by the way, typesetter working with tiny slivers of toxic lead all day long? Don’t be that guy.

Robert California jumps the shark on “The Office”

I was irrationally exuberant about the Robert California character on the revamped The Office, replacing Steve Carell as the office manager (OK, technically he’s now the CEO of the company, Linda Hunt apparently having bailed on that role). Played by the great James Spader, California first showed up as an interviewee for the job last spring. He seemed like a cube-dweller’s existential nightmare, somebody who had no idea who he was or why he was there but was designed to unsettle the person he was talking to in a very laid back, California way.

The first couple of shows this season were some of my all time favorites on The Office… including a Halloween episode in which he prowled the office gathering each employee’s worst fears, then told a horror story that incorporated all those fears. But that was also the show where he brought his kid to work, and now he’s taken to attending employee off-duty parties and making self aware statements like “you don’t know me at all, do you?” Robert California has jumped the shark.

There’s a lesson in this for marketers. The producers didn’t just decide out of the blue to emasculate the character. They must have done lots of audience testing that told them viewers were confused by “the boss” (and everybody knows that stereotype) behaving in such an unpredictable way. It made them nervous so it had to be changed. Similarly, sometimes our best copy and creative ideas are just too weird for our prospects and we have to bite our tongues and pull back to the tried and true.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Maybe James Spader can be persuaded to do a one man show based on the “real” Robert California.

Why you shouldn’t apologize to your reader

Here are two very different direct mail efforts that make the same mistake: apologizing to the reader. They don’t come right out and say “I’m sorry”, but the self-effacing entry points have the same effect. And by choosing this approach for their entry they’ve given up the opportunity to have another, much stronger intro.

: Waste Management self-mailer

Waste Management says “We know this is the last thing on your mind… but it’s the first thing on ours.” With the reveal of the opening trash can lid. Well, no. If it’s the last thing on my mind then why are you talking about it? If I don’t care about it then I am not going to read your promo about it.

The Fresh Air Fund sent me an address sticker package to solicit money to send inner city kids to camp. There’s actually some good copy here but not the first sentence of the letter: “With winter fast approaching, it may seem like an odd time to talk about giving inner-city kids a bus ticket to Fresh Air camp.” Well, yes it does. Maybe you should come back and talk to me in the spring.

: Fresh Air Fund sticker sheet

Or maybe you should lead with the stronger second sentence: “With your help, inner-city children will have the opportunity to leave behind the crowded apartments and dangerous streets they call home and join us next summer.” Or, maybe turn the timing of the appeal into a motivator: “We have to work all year long to make sure that inner city kids have the chance to spend a few summer weeks at camp. That’s why we’re writing you today.”

What’s happening in both these efforts is that the copywriter is implicitly apologizing for the intrusion. But the reader doesn’t care because advertising mail is a lower life form than a cockroach. All the reader wants to do is throw it away. And all you can do to save yourself is to deliver a powerful offer or a truly intriguing proposition that will interrupt that trajectory toward the recycling bin. The Uriah Heep act just doesn’t cut it.

David Toledano and the Toledano Method

Rabbi David Toledano is a family and marriage counselor with a big heart. He loves his work and he loves the people he comes into contact both in person and through his website, The Toledano Method. This love, combined with his uncanny powers of perception, make him a superb practitioner of his profession.

I had the pleasure to work with David on building his website and other promotional materials and I can tell you that he is the genuine article. (And yes, I picked up advice from him that was of value in my own marriage.) If you heard about a previous post from me on David that appeared to be not so positive, it’s important to realize that was tongue in cheek and written precisely because David is so wonderful, but it seems that the search engines do not have a sense of humor.

How to craft a good offer

The offer is what readers get when they respond to your call to action. Your success depends on making the offer as clear and appealing as you can. Very often you will be asked by your client to help design the offer. This is a chance to earn extra response points (and brownie points) with a creative concept which is also sound marketing.

In a direct sale, the product or service IS the offer. The prospect is going to respond not by asking for more information but by making a financial commitment here and now. Catalogs and e-commerce sites are filled with many direct sales offers, which can be presented economically because each takes only a few square inches of space. Catalog writers learn to write descriptive copy very efficiently; in a paragraph or two, you will give the reader everything they need to make a buying decision and also to distinguish the product from other similar products, sold by you or by your competitors.

A hard offer leads the reader directly into a sales conversation. Example: “call right now and we’ll set up an appointment with a service specialist at your convenience.” The response rate may be low but the leads will be very high quality, because only those who are seriously interested will respond. Note: your client may want to sugarcoat the sales visit and call it a “free consultation” or some such but most prospects will see the hard offer for what it is.

From a copywriter’s perspective, hard offers are risky. It’s entirely up to the sales force to turn those leads into sales and if they don’t, it will be your fault for not sending them good leads in the first place. If possible, recommend instead a….

A soft offer is information or a free trial that lures the reader into the sales conversation through an intermediate step. If we are doing lead generation copywriting, this is what we want to recommend because we maintain control. Literally, we are not “selling” the end result but rather the info kit, the webinar, or similar information. All we need to do is convince them that what we have to offer is worth a few minutes of their time in review.

Often the information will come “arm attached” in that it is accompanied by a call or visit from a salesperson. We can’t control what happens in that follow-up conversation, but we can deliver a very interested prospect through the way we set up the value of the information to be obtained.

Limited time offers and add-ons sweeten the pot for the prospect while they allow the merchant to influence buyer behavior. I’ve done some work for a medical alert service (the pendant around the neck, connected to a radio device that alerts an operator when the button on the pendant is pushed) and they are constantly testing such add-ons as a free lockbox (to hang on your door handle with a key inside, so EMS personnel can get into the house) and free coverage for your spouse when you buy today for yourself.

When you are writing about these more complex offers, you need to invest the copy real estate to make the add-ons understandable and appealing. In particular, if it’s a limited time offer paint a word picture of the benefit in responding now and the pain or disappointment to be expected if they wait.

Final tip: if your offer is very rich and involved, you can often build your communication around its components. I’m thinking of a continuity package I wrote for a fan club where you could get regular shipments of the “Highlander” TV series on video. The sign-up offer was a selection of “best of” and “blooper” videos as well as a free t-shirt. I used the components of the offer to pull the reader through the package in a “but wait, there’s more” technique, and then introduced the final premium in the P.S. which explained it would only be sent to readers who found a sword sticker hidden in the package and attached it to their order document.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Mahatma Gandhi on customer service

I saw this on a poster at my local purveyor of Indian goods and had to check out its veracity:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

The quote is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Ludicrous. Or is it? A search turns up both corroboration and skepticism. My money is with the denier who reports the quote actually came from Zig Ziglar, who says Gandhi said it.

Gotta love the internets.

UPDATE: the reference to Zig Zigler is oddly gone from the skeptic link above, replaced by one attributing the quote to L.L. Bean. Also, several people have mentioned that the quote universally ascribed to a speech Gandhi made in South Africa in 1890, but he didn’t actually arrive in South Africa in 1893.

Using “magnet words” to make your copy work harder

One way to make a message scannable is through the careful placement of “magnet words”. These are words so laden with implied interest and benefit that they draw the reader’s eye. Here are some examples:

You. (Or, better yet, the reader’s name used sparingly)
New
Free
Save
Guarantee/guaranteed
Easy/simple/foolproof
Proven
Safe (especially for health/personal care products)
Best/better
Solution (this one is overused in b2b selling so I’m not including it in my numbering)

A few years ago “announcing” and “introducing” would have made the list, but today they seem a bit hucksterish. Same with “improved” which in our litigious times, invites a lawsuit from the disgruntled owners of the previous non-improved version.

That’s a starter list; every copywriter has their own and probably calls them “magic words”. (Do a web search and see what you find.) Because you are a persuasive communicator you are using many of these words already. My point is that through the placement of these words you can add attention to surrounding copy that might not be interesting on its own.

Which is more likely to catch the reader’s eye: “Acme Instruments makes measurement devices for cell network technicians” or “Acme Instruments offers a proven solution for cell network technicians”? Of course it’s a solution because otherwise nobody would want it; and it better be proven or it’s worthless. But the magnet words make the copy more appealing. Add on the fact that it’s “guaranteed” and offer a “free” info kit and you’re in business.

The corollary lesson is that sometimes you DON’T want the reader to read your copy and in this case you should scrupulously avoid magnet words. A utility company served up a great example in a privacy notice about sharing their mailing list: “If this policy is acceptable, no action needs to be taken.” That’s a bit convoluted; would have been much clearer to say “If you agree with this policy, you do not need to take any action.” But wow, two magnet words are going to make sure the sentence is read and that’s exactly what this writer did not want to happen.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.