I got a marketing email today with the subject line:
“Add THIS To Your Coffee For A Memory Boost”
The email explains: “It’s not sugar or cream, and it’s not anything that will affect the taste… But it’s clinically shown to improve your memory starting in just 1 hour.”
Hmmm… interesting.
Almost as interesting as a Penn and Teller magic trick I watched involving a disappearing chicken. Penn announces he will make the chicken disappear from its cage through the use of misdirection. “That’s a magical term,” Penn informs you, “a term of art. It’s a curating of attention… giving the audience a story they can tell themselves that lets them not really know they were distracted.”
Penn keeps explaining how he’s going to fool you as he lowers a velvet cloth over the soon-to-be-disappeared chicken. And then suddenly, a man in a gorilla suit jumps out from backstage, banging some cymbals. Meanwhile, Teller, the quiet half of the duo, sneaks behind the cage, takes the chicken out, and walks off.
Eventually, the commotion settles down.
“How many of you saw the gorilla?” Penn asks the audience. Everybody raises their hand.
“And how many of you saw Teller take the chicken out?” Almost all hands go up again.
“Now, how many of you saw him sneak the gorilla into the cage?” Penn asks. And he strips away the velvet cloth to show the gorilla struggling in the cage, right where the chicken was only a few seconds ago.
Pretty impressive. But getting back to marketing… What is this non-sugar, non-cream coffee additive that will boost your memory in just one hour?
Well, if you click on the link, and have the patience to watch the VSL, you’ll find out it’s a run-of-the-mill supplement, specifically, a capsule containing some standard herbs that are supposed to make an old and tired mind sharper. It’s not in any way connected to coffee, though I guess you can plop it into your coffee, much like you could plop a pair of keys into your coffee so you don’t forget them.
Maybe you see my point.
Misdirection is a clever magic trick to use in copy. It works well to get attention, and probably, to increase sales as well. But be careful.
Unlike with a magic show, people won’t be pleased to be fooled like with the coffee/supplement example. Your misdirection should be subtle and, unlike in the marketing email I got, at least a little plausible. Nobody likes to feel like a gullible ass, and they probably won’t give you a second chance.