I once wrote an email with the subject line, “How I manipulated you, and how I might do it again.”
That email was all about the strategic use of inflammatory words — like “manipulated” — to get people reading stuff they might not read otherwise.
Well, Edward Bernays manipulated me, and I guess he manipulated millions of other people, too.
Right now, I’m reading Bernays’s book Propaganda. It’s been in print for the past 100 years, and it’s still discussed today, though I suspect few people who discuss it have ever read it.
Why do people know and discuss Propaganda? Because of that title. Propaganda. It’s like manipulated. On the one hand repulsive, on the other hand fascinating.
Imagine that Bernays had titled his book Public Relations — which is really what his book is about. Would we be talking about it today, much less reading it?
The answer is no. The proof is that Bernays did in fact write a book called Public Relations. Result?
Propaganda: 2,700+ reviews on Amazon
Public Relations: 74 reviews on Amazon — and I bet most of those only came via Bernays’s Propaganda fame
All that’s to say, hooks matter. And unless you hook someone right away, then all the other thousands of words you might have written won’t matter much.
But you knew that. It’s the oldest bit of advice traded around the copywriting bonfire.
What you might not know is how to write a great hook. How to make it sensational and inflammatory — propaganda for the rest of what you have to say.
About that. As Daniel Throssell wrote recently:
The skill of coming up with a great hook, and the skill of making it sensational, are almost exactly the same as a tiny, mechanical, supposedly “niche” copywriting skill you probably do not yet possess.
But it’s a skill you can find out more about, and even acquire quickly, via the following page: