Perhaps you’ve seen those videos of hypnotized sharks.
They usually involve a guy on a boat, reaching like an idiot into the water where a massive great white shark is licking its chops. But the before the shark has a chance to rip off both hand and arm, the man grabs the shark by the nose.
The shark is stunned by this audacity. It won’t bite, it won’t move, in fact it looks entirely focused and absorbed on the tip of its nose.
From then on, the idiot in the boat can do whatever he wants with the shark.
I’ve noticed the same principle at work in a bunch of recent financial and investing VSLs.
Of course, no hand reaches out of the screen to grab you by the nose.
But at the very start of the video, instead of jumping into the promise or the pitch or the proof, all these recent VSLs do something weird. Literally weird.
Like showing a disembodied hand holding a mysterious document.
Or showing a standard deviation curve — “Probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but…”
Or showing $32 million in cash laid out on a table.
As you probably know, in any market, and in particular in markets hardest-hit by heavy advertising (like financial and investing newsletters), people will get jaded. Prospects become like that great white shark — ready to rip apart anything that smells familiar.
So marketers have to keep innovating and inventing.
Right now, these kinds of bizarre pattern interrupts, preceding an otherwise standard sales message, seem to be working very well. That might be something to keep in mind if you too sell in dangerous, shark-infested waters.
On a non-shark note:
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