Don’t let the socialists hear about this one:
Back in 1832, a horse-and-man organization called the Equitable Labor Exchange issued a unique currency.
This currency looked much like your everyday money (with numbers and signatures and familiar font and color)…
It also functioned much like money (you could use it to pay at local London shops, several theaters, and even a tollgate)…
But unlike money, which is an abstract, bodyless entity, each unit of this currency represented something hard and definite:
One hour of labor.
This time-currency was conceived by one Robert Owen, a do-gooding factory owner who wanted to unleash prosperity and happiness on 19th-century Britain.
The start of Owen’s plan looked promising. Within 17 weeks, the Equitable Labor Exchange had deposits worth 440,000 work hours.
But ultimately, the project turned out to be a failure. The system was rewarding inefficiency. The Equitable Labor Exchange and its time-money disappeared a few years later.
Still, Robert Owen was on to a good idea, at least for copywriting.
Because even though we all assume copywriting prospects are moved by money, the same problem exists today:
Money remains an abstract, shapeless, bodyless entity.
Fortunately, money can buy you lots of shapeful, concrete things. And so you can convince readers of the value of what you’re selling, not by repeating numbers with a dollar sign in front of them… but by converting money into what it does:
So $0.24 becomes a romantic dinner over a bowl of Maruchan instant ramen…
$12.99 becomes a year’s worth of fun and insight, reading Modern Cat magazine…
And $19.84 becomes 10 gallons of gasoline, which by my back-of-the-envelope math, is enough to power a chainsaw long enough to cut down 280 oak trees. That’s a small forest!
Maybe I’m not tempting you with these dumb examples. But I think you get the point.
As long as you do your research, so you know what your prospect really values and wants, you can figure out a way to translate ugly, meaningless cyphers into that other currency your reader actually cares about.
And that can mean more money for you — and everything else that money can buy.