How to write heartfelt copy? Share two dimensions!

In addition to excellent insight, there are two other things that are indispensable for writing heartfelt copy : drama and brand / product role.

Zhihu original question:

What is heartfelt copywriting , and how to write heartfelt copywriting?

Are there any practical techniques or rules to achieve heartfelt copywriting? Or does one need to have more of one’s own experiences and feelings in life to be able to write it down?

I also benefited from some of the answers to this question, but a lot of the content is based on the discussion of classic cases, which inevitably gives off the suspicion of hindsight. After all, it is easy to deduce the "methodology" from successful cases, but it is difficult to use the "methodology" to create successful cases. So I decided to join the topic and talk about my own views based on my more than 10 years of practical advertising experience.

Before I get into the topic, let me tell you a little story:

There is a fable called "The North Wind and the Sun" by Aesop. The north wind and the sun were arguing about who was the most powerful. They made a bet that whoever took off the traveler's coat first would win. The north wind blew hard at the traveler, but the stronger the wind was, the tighter the traveler had to wrap his coat around himself; while the sun just flashed its light silently, and the traveler felt warm, so he took off his clothes one by one.

Most of the advertisements we see in our daily lives are like the north wind in the story, blowing hard on consumers with all its strength in the hope of changing their minds, but it often backfires; and the so-called "heartfelt" advertising ideas or copywriting are like the sun in the story, subtly influencing consumers' behavior.

Why do “heartfelt” advertisements have such magical power? Because consumers have long developed the instinct to automatically block out the incessant hawking, they will only be influenced by things that they emotionally accept!

Therefore, excellent advertisements should not only attract consumers' attention, but also be contagious enough to awaken their numb minds, generate emotional resonance, and trigger thinking, so that they can make active choices. Even if the viewpoints raised are recognized, the advertisement can become a topic of conversation among the public and people may forward it voluntarily.

How to create a heartfelt advertisement? Many people mentioned a word in their answers - insight, which is indeed a very important factor, but not all.

Because a good insight is only the most basic beginning. The key to achieving an excellent advertising creative is to create tension.

Only advertisements with tension can turn the audience's casual attention into sustained attention, and in the process of releasing tension, can bring consumers' emotions into it, subtly implanting the brand/product proposition into the audience's mind, allowing the advertisement to naturally take root and sprout in the audience's mind like a seed, and transform emotional identification into their own opinions, rather than relying on lengthy content in the advertisement to explain and teach.

In order to create tension in an advertisement, in addition to insight, there are two other things that are indispensable: drama and brand/product role. Next, I will talk about these three elements separately, and then summarize how to create creative tension in advertising through the role of these three elements.

1. Insight

The literal meaning of insight in Chinese is "see through", which means being able to discover the inner meaning and essence. If used in the advertising industry, people generally understand it as seeing through the hearts of consumers and understanding what they "want".

However, the English word "insight" not only means insight, but also means "intuition", and I think for advertising creativity: "intuition" is more important than "seeing through". Because in fact most consumers don’t know “what they want”. Before the invention of the car , consumers just wanted a faster horse. If you just want to make consumers feel that you understand them and go looking for a faster horse, you will lose the opportunity to create the idea of ​​the car.

So to find the best insight, in addition to looking into the hearts of consumers, you also need to look into your own heart and let your intuition tell you that there is an unknown existence that others do not yet know they want. When you show it to everyone, they will have an exclamation in their hearts: "Wow, this is what I want."

So how do you train your insight/intuition?

First of all, we need to break the limitations of thinking, because intuition comes from the subconscious, not known knowledge and information. Known things can only give you logical thinking. Although logical thinking can produce valuable results, it is difficult to create advertising ideas that impress the audience, because the public will not watch advertisements seriously with logical thinking , but will only take a quick glance and rely on 1/18 second intuition to perceive whether to receive or block advertising information.

Therefore, to judge the quality of an advertisement, you cannot use your brain, but rely on your intuition.

This is also what I talked about at the beginning, why the methodology deduced from hindsight is difficult to guide the generation of good ideas. Powerful creativity comes from a brilliant insight and intuition, not a set of methods.

To explore insights and intuition, you must first leave your comfort zone of "known" things.

If all existence in the world is divided into four quadrants, then the known is "knowing what you know", and the other three quadrants are "knowing what you don't know", "not knowing what you know" and "not knowing what you don't know". Good insights/intuitions generally come from the third and fourth quadrants of the unknown area.

2. Drama

Drama is the carrier of advertising tension. It is the process of stretching from the point of insight into a tense surface. That’s right, the word “drama” comes from drama, and drama in drama comes from conflict, which is created through plots, lines, performances, music, props and other carriers.

The drama of advertising is to create cognitive conflict for the audience.

Different from the medium of drama, the drama of advertisement can be in any creative form, perhaps through a slogan or a piece of copy, or through a picture or a video, a cartoon or a graphic article, or an event or a variety show...

When constructing the drama of an advertisement, never go astray. Just like a great play or movie , everything is done to construct that most core point of conflict. The rest should be removed, no matter how much you personally like it. Perfect creativity requires subtraction. It is not about adding good things until you can’t add any more, but about removing any one point and making it invalid. This is the only way to create enough tension through drama.

Drama is not about showing it to the audience, but about bringing the audience into it and letting them complete the process together. Even if it is just one sentence of copy, what you need to do is not to tell consumers something, but to lead them to discover something.

Simply making beautiful advertisements cannot create drama. A beautiful and handsome model with a friendly smile on his face, this conventional pattern of "hello and I are fine" does not have enough dramatic tension and it is difficult to achieve the ideal communication effect. There is a saying in communication:

"A dog biting a man is not news, but a man biting a dog is news."

The same goes for advertising. If you want to create dramatic conflict, you have to deviate from the “perfect plan” and abandon the “perfect picture”, “perfect script”, “perfect font”, “perfect model” and “perfect composition”. Only then will you have a chance to create tension and shock people.

For example: At the beginning of two stories, one is about a gentle man feeding a stray dog ​​on the street, and the other is about a gangster with a scar on his face feeding a stray dog ​​on the street. Which one can create more dramatic conflict and make people want to continue watching?

Of course, the greater the drama, the greater the risk. But this is precisely the fun of advertising creativity. Only by constantly challenging your limits and tapping into your own unpredictable potential can you have the opportunity to create enough tension and gain maximum benefits.

3. Brand / Product Role

In a drama, when the dramatic tension is stretched to a critical point, a hero appears to break this critical point and push the story to a climax, allowing the image of the hero to be deeply rooted in people's hearts. But advertising is not drama after all. Our purpose is not to create "heroes" but to convey the brand/product proposition to people's hearts. Therefore, the hero in the advertisement should be the brand/product itself.

The brand/personality role is crucial. It should be the most critical factor in releasing tension. To achieve this in this dramatic advertisement, it will not work if the brand/product role is removed or replaced with other brand/product stories.

The brand/product role is not necessarily physical, and may often be spiritual. How to define this role requires work at the brand level, rather than being arbitrarily formulated. A mature brand or product role should be very clear and have its own distinct personality. As for new brands and new products, I will not discuss the brand-level work here, but only the creative level.

Simple summary: Find insights through insight and intuition, and then create advertising content with dramatic conflicts based on this insight, allowing the brand/product character to become a hero to break this conflict and create a climax. In the process of releasing advertising tension, the ideas that the brand/product wants to express are cleverly implanted in people's hearts, subtly influencing the audience's consumer behavior.

The process of learning creativity is the process of transforming the tangible into the intangible. The above text is not an answer, but just some personal opinions. It is only used as an inspiration for everyone to think actively. Do not use specific routines and methods to "derive creativity", because that can only be a limited imitation , and it is difficult to create a work with soul.

Of course, you can also study those classic cases with the above thinking in mind. The most important thing is to cultivate your positive creative ability rather than reverse the methods and routines.

This article was compiled and published by @研究生梦游 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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