Secret Hollywood engagement trick works even better for emails & sales copy

One of my favorite marketing teachers was… Alfred Hitchcock. He wasn’t a marketing guy but he did get his start in marketing movies working in the promotions department. And he did a lot of interesting things in his films to simultaneously promote the movies and his own brand which is a fascinating topic in and of itself. One of the best things he did to capture and keep engagement in his movies? Purposely leave things out. i.e., Let the viewer’s imagination do the heavy lifting. You can see other master filmmakers do the same thing. Like, for example, Christopher Nolan in Batman Begins. Compare the shipping yard fight scene where you don’t even really see Batman fighting to the clunky and dorky looking fighting in the two sequels and it’s night and day difference. The former left out, let your imagination to do a lot of the work... while the other two over showed and it looked goofy in a lot of cases, even to people who love those particular movies. This is an extremely powerful copywriting technique I’ve found. For example: Once upon a time I was writing an ad for a self defense offer. And I spent God-only-knows how many hours writing and rewriting the first couple pages which required lots of action. Those were fun ads to write — almost more like screenplays in some ways than “ads.” But in this case it was too much. Too detailed. So I threw out the entire draft and started from scratch. But this time I used the Hitchcock “leave out” technique. And… voila! The sales letter was run, unchanged by the client, and made so much money the first day he let me know him and the CEO were closing up for the day and going home early. I’m not saying the ad did all that by itself (his rabid list was the biggest factor). But it sounded like even he was surprised by how well it pulled. And I attribute it to leaving out instead of filling in too much. Another example: Many years ago I wrote an ad for the work at home niche. Not a niche I liked, and have zero desire to revisit. (Very shady niche.) And in hindsight I am glad the ad never ran even though it was, in many ways, one of the best ads I’d ever written at the time. And the reason was at least partly because I used another Hollywood technique — this time used by Method Actors — to make the story far more compelling and interesting via creating a subtext for it that ‘said’ more than the words were saying. And if I did my job right, picked up on subconsciously by the reader to make the woman the ad was coming from more likable and empathetic, and easier to bond with, trust, want to buy from. Years later I saw some of my favorite performers routinely use this technique. And it is very applicable to copywriting, emails, and marketing. But, it’s not a “writing” technique, so much as an approach to writing. And, in fact, one of my favorite movies Top Gun was made far more engaging, fun, interesting, and probably popular as a result of one of the actors doing this technique throughout the movie to make his otherwise dull and boring more interesting and engaging. Anyway, if this sounds cryptic that’s because it’s meant to. As it is something I cannot do justice in an email like this. Instead, I write all about it in the July Email Players issue which is all about infotainment and using this approach used by performers to create more compelling and engaging sales copy, sales letters, sales emails, and the list goes on. If you write for clients I think you’ll find it especially valuable. But even if you write for your own offers it’s still quite powerful. And while I have not heard any other copywriters talking about it much less teaching it (not saying nobody ever has, I just have not hear it), I believe in it so much, and have seen so much success with it that I DEFY you not to start using it in your sales copy and emails and not write better, more persuasive, more profitable advertising. I’m sending the July issue into the printer tonight. After that, it’ll be too late to subscribe in time to get it. So if you want in, best make with the hustle & the bustle and hit the link below: []( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA