Sometimes it can be good to stand out. For example:
Back in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, one Joseph Sugarman made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales through full-page ads he ran in various magazines. He was competing for the attention of readers with other advertisers, most of whom were trying to cram as many features and benefits as possible into their ad headlines.
Not so with Joe. Much of the time, he ran his ads with cryptic one- or two-word headlines I’ll call “briefs.” Examples include:
“Hot”
“Pet Plane”
“Magic Baloney”
“Vision Breakthrough”
“Hungarian Conspiracy”
Joe’s theory was the all the visual elements of an ad — the headline, the images, the logo, etc — serve only one purpose.
And that purpose is to get the reader to read the first sentence.
The ultra-short headlines old Joe used helped do this in a few different ways.
For one, they stood out, relative to all the other ads out there, and they attracted attention. Two, they were easy on the reader. It doesn’t take a lot to digest one or at max two words. Three: even though they were short, all these headlines were curiosity-baiting. And here’s why that’s so important.
Imagine I’d used a different short headline for this post. In fact, imagine it was simply, “Short Headlines.”
I don’t think, and maybe you would agree, that it would work nearly as well as “Briefs,” which hints at what’s inside without giving it away, while at the same time conjuring up images of red underpants in your mind.
Anyways, I think briefs are great. And they should definitely be used on occasion.
But at least when it comes to daily emails, they shouldn’t be used all the time. It stops being novel or intriguing. Nor should they be used as a crutch, when a more direct, benefit-oriented title, headline, or subject line would do better.
For example, I’ll soon be launching a new book on Amazon. It’s titled:
“How to become a $150/hr, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork”
I could have called this book “Upwork Secrets.” Or “Freelancing Baloney.”
But considering the platform I’ll be selling on, the people I’m after, and the kind of content that’s inside the book, I think I’ll be more effective with the long title.
Anyways, once I launch the book, it will go through a short free promo period. If you want to get notified when this happens, sign up below: