S…E…X… Sells – Not necessarily the physical act, but beauty, emotion, feelings
Let’s talk about Appeals. This is the overall tenor of your design. It is the sense people get when they encounter your design and makes them want to know more. The rules for Headlines still apply, and don’t forget the Problem and Solution, but the appeal is something you can work with from different angles until you get it right.
The appeal is that intangible feeling someone gets from what they see and read in your design that makes them want to pay attention and take action.
There are four basic appeals that have been proven to work. These are known qualities that affect everyone. Each person responds to these, and your design should pay careful attention to using them.
- Sex/Emotion/Caring – not necessarily just the physical act, but the caring, beauty and emotion it elicits. We have all said at one time or another, “That’s a sexy car.” Well, it’s a car, but it elicits an emotion or feeling that is “sexy”.
- Greed – for money or the things money can buy.
- Fear – mostly of losing something you have, or would have had if you took action. Coupons are a combination of greed and fear. If you don’t use that coupon, you lose something.
- Duty/Honor/Professionalism – the best of something, or, the duty to do something. Life insurance has always been a strong duty appeal. Recently protecting the environment has become a strong duty appeal.
It’s very important to understand that generally, Sex appeal is the strongest appeal, Greed is a close second, Fear is a distant third, and Duty/Honor/Professionalism is by far the least appealing.
It is equally important to understand that all of this depends on your target audience and the problem they have that you are trying to solve.
The way you have to think of it is, what will make people first, look at your ad, and second, respond to it. Having said that, a sexy ad will get more attention, but if that’s all it has, it may not get people to respond. If someone is looking for a doctor, a sexy ad may get their attention as the first appeal, but then the quality of the medical care needs to be there to get them to respond to the ad.
Taking the headline rules we have talked about, imagine these headlines:
- “Look Younger” This is in the self-interest of a particular audience, and it’s got sex appeal.
- How about this one: “Make More Money.” Obvious greed appeal.
- Or, “Don’t Lose Out.” This is fear appeal.
- And, “Best Medical Care” is a professionalism appeal.
Now, let’s see if we can put some of these together. Better yet, let’s imagine each one can be scored from 1-10. So, if you had the perfect ad, the score would include a score of 10 for each type of appeal, with a total score of 40. It’s not likely we can do that, but it’s a good way to quantify how good your headline is and your appeal.
Let’s imagine your target audience is women age 25-50 and the service you are offering is to get rid of wrinkles. What about this headline? Would it gain a lot of attention?
“Looking Younger Makes You More Money”
What score would you give it? Eight for sexy, 8 for greed, 4 for fear (not looking younger will cost you money), and 2 for duty (most people have a sense they should try to make more money). Total – 22.
We would think that is a good headline with multiple appeals. Now, what if we said, “Wrinkle Removal”. This is basically the same headline without much of an appeal. You can see how you can do so much more with this idea as we did in the first headline.
“It’s Not Too Late To Look Younger”
This is a sexy, emotional headline, with some fear mixed in, plus a sense of urgency. It’s getting later every day, so now is the time to act. Probably scores an 18.
“Don’t Miss Out On the Latest Wrinkle Treatment”
This is more of a fear headline, but has a sexy component. You don’t want to miss out, and you can look younger and sexier. Probably an 18.
You can mix and match these all kinds of ways to try to incorporate all 4 appeals. Copy writers literally spend hours and hours, weeks on end and sometimes months to come up with the right appeal. This is where many of the most creative and impactful ad campaigns are generated – people trying to find the words and designs that are the most appealing using these 4 appeals.
The one thing you can bank on is that if your ad doesn’t score well for these appeals, then it’s not going to be effective.
