DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
102
Figure 34
An ad with a riddle in its headline that provokes my curiosity. Repro-
duced by kind permission of RNIB.
Writer’s fog
Most copywriters develop their own
structural
style through a mixture of trial
and error, observation, imitation, and coaching. A simple method is to limit
yourself to one thought per paragraph, broken into three short sentences. Use
brackets for interjections, Saxon wording, and edit out disruptive “thats.”
It seems to work.
And don’t be afraid of really short paragraphs to make points of strong
emphasis or contrast.
(The word
that
, by the way, can often be excised from copy without any-
body noticing. For example, “It was news to me we’d won the contract” has
a
that
removed, with the positive effect of jamming the two clauses more
actively together.)
One thing’s for sure: Long sentences and long words make text more
difficult to understand. And that means fewer sales.
There’s a well-established way of measuring the clarity of writing, called
the Fog Index.
33
The higher you score, the cloudier your message.
Here’s how to work it out:
1T
ake a section of your text and count 100 words (exclude proper
names, and treat hyphenated words as one word).
2
Count the number of sentences in this 100-word block.
3
Divide 100 by the number of sentences. Call the answer X.
4
Count the number of words with three or more syllables. Call the
answer Y. (Exclude words that reach three or more syllables by a part
of speech, e.g. plurals: message
➔
messages = two not three; or verb
tenses: listen
➔
listening = two not three).
5F
og Index = (X + Y)
×
0.4.
Clear writing has a Fog Index of between 9 and 12. For some tabloids it can
be as low as 5. Certainly, for most advertising copy you should aim for less
than 10.
The excerpts from ads shown in Figure 35 overleaf have respective Fog
Indices of 9 and 16. These were real ads, placed in the same publication.
See if you can tell which is which.
STEP 3: WORDING
103
This book, on a random 10-section sample, just scored 9.3 — which I hope
is not bad, as it’s saddled with phrases like “marketing communications.”
Certainly, if you can, keep your sentences short. One Australian study
concluded that learning declines as the number of words in a sentence
increases beyond seven.
34
(And this correlates to George A Miller’s famous
paper entitled “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some lim-
its on our capacity for processing information.”
35
)
Designeritis
As Oscar Wilde said, “No great artist ever sees things as they really are; if
he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
Many small firms use design agencies to produce their ads, brochures,
and mailings. Designers are very skilled at making things look nice — awe-
some, even — but sometimes less skilled at
selling
. And boy can they man-
gle text!
If you treat text as a graphic device of course it can appear more pleas-
ing when set, for instance, in fully justified blocks of reversed-out sans-serif
upper-case type. But wait until your customer tries to decipher it.
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
104
Figure 35
Excerpts from two ads
placed in the same busy magazine.
One has a Fog Index of 9, the other 16.
Read the copy and it should be easy to
tell which is which.
If you’ve ever read bedtime stories to a small child, you’ll know there’s
a moment when they start identifying words. “Look!” they exclaim,
pointing excitedly, ahead of where you’re up to. When you do look, you
find it’s the word “look” — one of the first they learn to recognize by its
shape.
That’s how we read. We learn the shapes of words. But not words set in
upper case (i.e. CAPITALS).
I’m not sure anyone knows which is the chicken and which the egg
here. Do our brains prefer words set primarily in lower case and so we have
surrounded ourselves with them? Or do we grow up to prefer words set in
lower case
because
we
are surrounded by them?
Intuitively, and I think logically, the former seems to make more
sense. A word has a more distinct visual identity set in lower case. Typo-
graphers (a rare breed nowadays) believe that serif typefaces enhance
this effect.
INTUITIVELY, AND I THINK LOGICALLY, THE FORMER SEEMS TO
MAKE MORE SENSE.A WORD HAS A MORE DISTINCT VISUAL IDENTITY
SET IN LOWER CASE. TYPOGRAPHERS (A RARE BREED NOWADAYS)
BELIEVE THAT SERIF TYPEFACES ENHANCE THIS EFFECT.
As you can see, I just repeated the last paragraph using capitals and a
sans-serif typeface. (Serifs are the little curly bits that help letters glide into
one another. Sans serif means without serifs.) I could go one step further
and reverse out the text, i.e. use white lettering on a black background. But
in the easy-to-read stakes, it’s already no contest.
So don’t let your precious words be press-ganged into service as reluc-
tant graphics. If we were meant to communicate with pictures we’d all
carry sketch pads. Deaf people use sign languages that are every bit as rich,
complex, and structured as spoken languages.
36
Twelve typographical tips
Much has been learned about the presentation of words to make them sell
better. Here are some of my favorite soundbytes of received wisdom.
STEP 3: WORDING
105
1
DO put your headline below the main image, and the body copy
beneath this. It mirrors the natural eye flow and gets 10 percent more
readership than a headline set above the image.
37
(In a series of direct
marketing tests, response increased by between 27 and 105 percent.
38
)
2
DON’T set text over pictures. (It can reduce attention value by about
20 percent.
39
) You wouldn’t write a report to your boss and then doo-
dle all over it to make it harder to read.
3
DO use a large initial drop capital to start the text. (This means a big
first letter — look in your newspaper.) It telegraphs to your customer
where to begin and increases readership by 13 percent.
40
4
DON’T juxtapose red and blue text — these colors are at opposite
ends of the spectrum and the eye finds them a strain to deal with.
41
(Avoid colored text in general.)
5
DO set body copy in a serif face, minimum 11 point, in narrow
columns of about 40–50 characters.
6
DON’T set body copy in reversed-out type (i.e. white text on a black
background). It’s much harder to read. Short headlines, reversed
out, are OK.
7
DO put a caption underneath the main image — it will be read by
twice as many people as read the body copy.
42
8
DON’T put your logo in the headline or body copy. Your customer
wo
n’t read it as part of the sentence. Use normal type for your brand
name.
And some DOs specifically for direct mail:
9
DO pull out your main headline at the top of your letter (e.g. into a
“Johnson box”).
43
10
DO tell a synopsis of your message via the subheads above each
paragraph — make it easy for the scan reader.
11
DO use a large typeface, narrow columns (average 10 words per
line), and plenty of line spacing.
PS 12 DO use a PS to repeat an important fact — it gets high readership
because your customer looks to see who’s writing to them.
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
106
STEP 3: WORDING
107
Figure 36
Designeritis: no headline; text used as a graphic device; type reversed
out and set over the image. And there really was an ad that looked
like this.
A few words about negatives
I’ve occasionally read that you shouldn’t use negative expressions in ads,
especially double negatives like this sign I spotted at a well-known
fairground:
“If you are not as tall as me you cannot ride on the mini dodgem.”
The argument goes that your customer will be confused by a statement
containing double negatives. I can certainly buy this. If you’re not careful,
your headline won’t make sense.
David Ogilvy cautioned against straight negatives, such as this one:
“Our salt contains no arsenic.”
He said the danger was that the reader misses the negative and comes away
with the opposite opinion (i.e. that the salt does contain arsenic).
44
This I
find harder to agree with, although it’s
wo
rth being alert to
the possibility.
Steven Pinker is far less prescriptive when it comes to negatives and
confusion. For instance, he argues that the well-known line “I can’t get no
satisfaction” is both perfectly grammatical and unequivocal in its
meaning.
45
John Caples recommends you avoid headlines that paint the gloomy
side of the picture.
46
For instance:
“Is worry robbing you of the good things in life?”
His advice is to take the cheerful, positive angle. Intuitively this feels right,
and is supported by a generally known phenomenon within the sales pro-
motion industry: that positive rewards get a better response than negative
ones. For example, a free box of chocolates should pull more responses
than a free first-aid kit of the same perceived value. Claude Hopkins found
that positive ads outpulled their negative counterparts by four to one.
47
James F Engel states that people are less likely to enjoy buying and
using what he calls “negative-reinforcement” products, are less recep-
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
108
tive to advertising for them, and spend less time and effort in buying
them.
48
However, in the battle for share of the quitting smoker’s newly found
disposable income, “It needn’t be hell with Nicotinell” has been used to
good effect for some years. It contains both a negative and the dark side of
the story. The brand is the UK’s longest-established nicotine patch.
And then there’s “I can’t believe it’s not butter.” Double negative, yet
immensely successful as a new product. It must be one of the few brands
with a name that’s actually a headline. And I don’t imagine it would have
done as well had it been called “I can’t believe it’s margarine.” Perhaps this
bears out Ogilvy’s view: The word
butter
acts as an embedded command,
so the customer subconsciously takes on board the notion that it is butter
— or at least that it has buttery qualities.
My advice would be to take note of these authorities, and then to use
your common sense. Avoid negatives as a general rule, but don’t worry
about going with a strong line just because it ain’t positive
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