I watched the Harmon Brothers Agora video today.
You might know what I’m talking about. It’s a humorous, viral-style video by the same people who made the one for Purple Mattress — except this one is selling an Agora stock-picking service.
This video is deadpan because it moves so quickly. I counted 17 jokes — visual, verbal, and physical – in the first 60 seconds alone. That’s a joke every 3.5 seconds, and I might have missed some.
When I first saw this video, I thought it was mostly a ripoff of Will Farrell movies. But I now realize it’s actually inspired by The Simpsons, which had the same rapidfire sequence of jokes.
Each joke might not be spectacular in itself. But the jokes are staggered in such quick fashion and edited so tightly that your brain starts to play along.
Unfortunately, the type of humor in the Harmon Brothers video is hard to replicate in writing. Instead, this might be a good way to write a lead, particularly for a VSL in gotta-wow-em markets like bizopp or weight loss. Here’s the recipe:
Take everything you want to say, all your promises, open loops, proof, objections and rebuttals, and write an obnoxiously long lead. Don’t be shy. Then boil it down through merciless editing by at least 10%, preferably much, much more.
The resulting copy will have so much momentum, that even if none of your individual claims or promises is all that unique or impressive or believable, you will simply blitz your reader’s brain into sticking with you through the first few minutes. And that, as they say is, 50% of the battle.
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