Two Timeless Rules for the Brand Builder to Harness Attention
TL;DR:
Below is the wisdom of those who earned millions from the profession of seizing attention. Read this one…
Speak Directly to Your Target Audience and Do It Immediately!
A headline, a hook, an opening scene - from advertisers throughout history that harnessed attention using various marketing channels, they all use different names to explain the same set of rules.
Claude Hopkins became a master at direct mail campaigns and penned ‘Scientific Advertising,’ a collection of invaluable information in gaining attention from target audiences. A quote:
“How important are headlines? I'm glad you asked. Some pundits say the headline accounts for 80% of the success of the ad. I, myself, have re-headlined ads and increased their pull by 475%”
David Ogilvy is considered the father of advertising. He wrote ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man,’ a timeless guide to crafting campaigns that convert. A quote:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”
Donald Miller, author of ‘Building a Story Brand,’ uses stories to bring clarity to the message of a business. He gains his expertise from the film industry:
“Before knowing what the hero wants, the audience has little interest in her fate. This is why screenwriters have to define the character’s ambition within the first nine or so minutes of a film getting started”
Humans pay attention to what is desirable to them. But they won’t stick around to see if the message applies; it’s either immediately obvious or it is ignored. Hopkins and Ogilvy both found that the headline was the most important piece of any advertisement. Miller found that to keep viewers, he must make the character relatable within the first nine minutes.
This is the yarn that connects hundreds of years of attracting attention: humans respond to stories that are relevant to them. What the above-mentioned individuals noticed is effectiveness in gaining attention increased by doing two things:
Speaking directly to the desired audience
Doing so as quickly as possible
These two rules have and will continue to remain constant, no matter the channel in which they are applied.
Use a Magnet
A magnet is a material that produces a magnetic field. This field exerts force on other objects that enter this field. If metal enters, there is a strong attraction to the magnet. Almost every other material is affected in an extremely limited manner, if not at all.
This is 3rd-grade science - let’s see how it applies to you.
When you create content, you are creating a magnetic field. The goal is to create a powerful magnetic field to attract your target market (metal). Each channel boasts different interaction requirements with your target market. As the time limit for gathering attention varies, it is essential to know how long you have to establish a magnetic field. Social media hosts a 3-second attention gap. A movie audience member will remain attentive for 9 minutes until they decide to move on. And a public speaker has about 30 seconds to capture attention or lose it.
This moment of attention must be capitalized on, or else the entirety of your message will be ignored. This should be your two-step process of creating a magnet:
Identify the amount of time you have to capture attention
Identify who you want attention from (the metal)
Now you can form a headline, speech opener, hook, whatever it may be, that captures attention from the people you want it from.
As Ogilvy and Hopkins clarified, this activity of creating a magnet is worth at minimum 80% of your efforts.
Disneyland?
Let’s imagine you are at Disneyland at midday, surrounded by a stream of people moving in various directions. You want to tell your friend a joke, but you seem to have lost him in the crowd. Before saying the joke, it would be most appropriate to shout his name so he can come over to you.
And so it is with advertising and storytelling.
No matter the channel (website, email, LinkedIn, and so on), there is a huge mess of people. You need to call the people of interest over and then tell them the story of your product, service, or brand.
Your goal is not to harness the eyes of the entire world. This would be expensive and ineffective.
Rather, the goal is to gain attention only from those who will buy what you offer (buy means both in the literal purchase of a product or service or the action of opting into a message).
Action
In the next output (video, email, socials, speaking engagement, etc.) from your business or brand, address by name the people you want to listen.
If you are speaking to fathers, use FATHERS in your headline. If you are talking to first-time homeowners, say FIRST TIME HOMEOWNERS.
Blessings Brand-Builders,
Spencer A.
“The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides the reader whether to read the copy.”
- David Ogilvy
