How does a copywriter become a profiteer?

How do real estate developers make you want to buy a house with just one sentence? How do diamond merchants make you believe that love with diamonds will last forever? How do food manufacturers make you believe that eating their food will not make you fat? The author of this article uses humorous words to demonstrate the "copywriting routines" of these merchants one by one. Let's take a look.

Nowadays, advertising copywriting is a high-risk profession. There is the Advertising Law everywhere, and one may be sanctioned if one is not careful.

As a (not very serious) copywriter, although I don't have the courage to engage in false propaganda, I still have the courage to avoid the main issue and selectively tell the truth, and it is very big.

As for how we did it, here is a brief demonstration.

1. Real estate advertising

There was a joke circulating online before, which talked about how real estate advertisements deceive people:

Next to the stinky ditch - a waterfront residence with good wind and water

The buildings are very close together - close neighbors, harmonious and warm

There is security at the door - butler service

…

In fact, this is all false propaganda, just treat it as a joke. We don't bother to do this.

We will deeply explore the value of the project. We will not deliberately exaggerate it, but will provide appropriate guidance so that consumers will be willing to pay for it in the end.

For example, if the location is remote and consumers are resistant, how can we solve this problem? There are many ways.

For example, the main feature is the price/performance ratio - "1/3 the price, arrive in 20 minutes" .

Although it is far from work, the price is low. How did I get the 20 minutes? If I drive, I definitely don’t count traffic jams and traffic lights. In this case, at a speed of 80km/h, I can drive from Beijing Third Ring Road to Langfang, Hebei in 20 minutes.

Of course, the Advertising Law later prohibited the use of time to express distance. But I am not afraid of that. I can still promise you a bright future - "Hundreds of billions of urban planning, seize the new core of the future" .

This is by no means nonsense. We will study every word of the city-level "Five-Year Development Plan", a document of hundreds of pages.

To put it bluntly, even in a remote place, you can find the planning for this place in official documents. As for planning, those who understand it will understand it. Or I should just stop pretending and admit that I am remote. What's wrong with that?

Hence the well-known advertising slogan - "The distance I keep from the world" , the more direct "Distance creates villa" , or the more profound "I can see the world, but the world cannot see me" .

There are also some properties near the sea that dare to promote themselves as "first-line sea views" even though you can only see a hint of the sea view. This is a clear way of using a pun.

But we can’t. If we can’t see the sea, we can’t see it, no matter how close we are! Hence the saying “When you are in Shenzhen, your heart is listening to the sea” .

For shops that have difficulty attracting investment, as long as a large bank moves in, we will say "We are neighbors with the Fortune 500" or "Who you stand with determines who you are" , etc., to create a high-end business atmosphere here. After all, the most important thing for a business district is the atmosphere.

But the fact is, if a bank moves into a shopping street outlet, it means there is really no other way. Especially since banks are wealthy, they will often choose the best locations and close at night and on weekends when it is busy. This is exactly the worst for the business atmosphere.

But that’s actually not important. What’s important is to launch the shop.

2. Diamond Marketing

200 years ago, diamonds were indeed rare, and diamonds were valuable. It was not until 1870 that a huge diamond mine was discovered in South Africa. As the output increased, diamonds became worthless. So several major diamond dealers united to form De Beers, which controlled the output of diamond mines around the world and stabilized the price of diamonds by creating scarcity.

The price has stabilized, but who should we sell so many diamonds to?

The American NWAyer advertising company proposed a strategy: to bind diamonds with the promise of love.

One late night in 1947, the company's female copywriter Frances Gerety was inspired and wrote the famous sentence "A DIAMOND IS FOREVER" , which was later translated into "Diamonds are forever" in China.

At the same time, De Beers also spent a huge amount of advertising fees to insert diamond proposal scenes in movies, TV series, plays, school lectures, and even children's cartoons. Whenever a gentleman kneels down on one knee to propose to his beloved beautiful girl, he will definitely take out a diamond ring.

Soon the idea of ​​using diamonds to propose marriage became popular, and from then on love was transformed into an eternal diamond, held tightly in the hands.

This move also kills two birds with one stone and solves the problem of second-hand diamond circulation: how can you use second-hand diamonds for first-hand love? So we see that the second-hand brand diamond ring with full packaging and certificate priced at 600 yuan on a certain fish is not in demand.

In order to get people to buy more expensive diamonds, the movie scripts would remind people to "buy the biggest and shiniest diamonds" . Since many women are reluctant to spend money, the scripts would tell men to "give diamonds as a surprise. Buy them secretly and then give her a surprise" .

But soon in 1959, large diamond mines were discovered in Siberia, the Soviet Union. De Beers understood the socialist countries' style of rapid development, so they wooed the Soviet Union, and with the goal of making money together, the two sides happily reached a consensus.

But the diamonds produced in the Soviet Union were small, broken diamonds, which were more suitable for making jewelry, so the copywriter began to say that "diamond jewelry also represents love."

Later, other African countries also discovered broken diamonds, which were controlled by local warlords as a source of military expenditure. The warlords would not listen to reason, so how to control the production? Although the warlords had a lot of diamonds, their technology was rough, so the copywriters packaged various concepts about diamond quality standards and cutting technology.

The "marketing myth" of diamonds lasted for a hundred years until it met Made in China. Today, China's artificial diamond technology has reached its peak. Not only is the price low, but even when placed next to natural diamonds, experts cannot distinguish them, and even machines cannot identify them.

So the copywriter came up with a new slogan: Real is Rare, Real is Diamond .

It means that only my real diamonds are rare and can represent love.

But it seems to have little effect, so De Beers said it would stop pretending and launched artificial diamonds in 2018...

Copywriter: It was a wrong decision after all, and all the work was written in vain.

3. Food Technology

The standards in the food industry are relatively complex, and the knowledge gaps that ordinary consumers do not understand are the dynamic areas of our activities.

Modern people pay attention to healthy diet. Those who want to lose weight prefer 0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories, and those who want to maintain their health value non-GMO, 0 cholesterol, and 0 preservatives. Okay, then we will start from here.

As a result, many beverage copywritings on the market began to focus on the concept of "0 sugar, 0 fat".

But 0 sugar does not mean no sugar. my country's General Rules for Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods stipulate that as long as the sugar content in every 100 grams of food does not exceed 0.5 grams, it can be labeled "0 sugar" or "sugar-free". my country's dietary guidelines for residents have suggested that the daily sugar intake of each person should be controlled within 25 grams. So if you drink 8 bottles of a 600 ml bottle of sugar-free beverage as water a day, even if you don't eat, the sugar intake for that day has exceeded the limit.

In addition, some people are afraid of cholesterol, so I write "0 cholesterol" in the title of my corn oil. In fact, corn oil does not contain cholesterol.

Some people are very afraid of genetically modified organisms, so my peanut oil copywriting says "non-GMO peanut oil" , but in fact peanuts cannot be genetically modified. Of course, the country has now issued regulations prohibiting peanut oil from being labeled "non-GMO".

Some people are particularly concerned about preservatives, so I write "0 preservatives" on the label of my canned fruit. In fact, current canning technology does not require any preservatives at all.

You say this kind of copywriting is meaningless, I say that this is where consumer demand lies.

In fact, this kind of nonsense copywriting was already used by the "father of scientific advertising" Hopkins more than 100 years ago.

At that time, Hopkins was advertising Schlitz beer. He went to a beer school to learn how to brew beer, but he was still at a loss after that, so he visited a beer factory. At that time, major American beer manufacturers were competing to promote the concept of "pure", and Schlitz beer was no exception.

But there is too much publicity like this, and people have become accustomed to it. Schlitz's sales have always ranked fifth in the industry, neither going up nor down.

Hopkins was amazed when he came to the Schlitz factory. He saw the purification glass room, white wood pulp filtration, pure water drawn from 4,000 feet underground, and pure yeast cultivated through 1,200 experiments. These are all the processes used by Schlitz to ensure the purity of beer.

Hopkins was surprised and asked the factory manager: Why don't you promote this? The factory manager replied awkwardly: Because this is the standard process, and every brewery does this.

Hopkins insisted on including all of the above beer purification processes in subsequent advertisements. Just a few months later, Schlitz beer sales jumped from fifth to first, and later became the largest beer brand in the United States.

Hopkins believes that although these are standard processes, if someone is the first to associate these amazing craftsmanship with a product, it will have a unique position in the minds of consumers.

4. Product Efficacy

"Like cures like" is a dietary therapy method summed up by the working people over thousands of years. Although it has no scientific basis, some people still believe in it.

For example, do walnuts really nourish the brain? This involves a concept: what is "nourishing the brain"? Does eating walnuts make people smarter, or does it supplement brain nutrition?

The former is like the "Brain Spirit" oral liquid many years ago, claiming that after drinking it, even prenatal education can help children get into 985 universities, and it is sold specifically to parents whose brains are not very smart. The latter is to supplement the nutrients needed by the brain. For example, the brain is mainly composed of protein, and the brain needs energy to work, and sugar is also needed. In addition, the brain also needs an appropriate amount of zinc and vitamins, as well as phospholipids needed by brain cell membranes. At the same time, general research also believes that brain development is also related to DHA...

So what we call brain nourishment mostly refers to the latter, that is, it can provide nutrition for the brain. Comparing the nutritional composition table of walnuts, it is a coincidence that many nutrients are indeed met.

So walnuts can really nourish the brain, and the working people have taught us another lesson. We can now shout out the slogan loudly - "Use your brain often and drink more XXXX."

But the question is, are walnuts the only thing that can provide these nutrients?

Obviously not. To be exact, these nutrients are very common in our daily diet.

The nutrients that the brain needs most are mainly protein and fat, so I would like to introduce "fried eggs" .

Of course, if you want to eat more, Jianbing Guozi is also a good choice. The copywriting is ready-made , "If you often use your brain, you can have Jianbing Guozi." In this regard, who does the tomato and egg noodles look down on? Lanzhou ramen, which "both meat and eggs" are also worth a try. ...

The above is about walnuts. Now let's look at walnut milk beverages. According to the listing prospectus, the material cost of each can of walnut milk is 1 yuan, including 0.57 yuan for the can and 0.25 yuan for the walnut. Of course, for us, it doesn't matter how many walnuts are in it, but how many cans we can sell is important.

5. Final Thoughts

In fact, as a (not serious) copywriter, we are often asked a question: if you know that the product is not good and is not as good as your competitors, will you still try your best to write copy for it? The answer is of course "yes".

In fact, advertising writers often have to write good copy for "not-so-good" products because we believe that even the worst products (the legitimate ones) are always special. This promotes consumerism, but that's our justice.

【References】

"Can eating walnuts really improve your brain?" - Interesting 404

"How much sugar do you need to consume every day to lose weight?" - 39 Health Network

"97% of revenue is supported by "Six Walnuts" alone. Yangyuan Drinks is still below the IPO price after 4 years of listing" - Financial World

"The diamond scam that deceived the world for 130 years was defeated by Made in China" - Technology Wang

Author: Kuang Shisan, WeChat public account: Free shipping