A few weeks ago, I found myself at a restaurant staring at a fat kid.
He was sitting in the corner, picking his nose, and playing a racing game on his tablet. It was uncanny. He was as close to Nelson from The Simpsons as I’ve ever seen a kid in real life, including the two-tone ha-ha laugh he kept repeating.
My dinner partner, a healthier and more rooted person than I am, thought the kid was great. “Look at how much energy he has! So full of life!” All evening long, he kept calling Nelson to our table, pinching him, tickling him, teasing him. Of course, Nelson loved it.
Ha-ha!
I’ve long wondered why teasing works so well.
Playfully accuse somebody. Push them away. Even jokingly insult them. And odds are, they will love you for it.
I don’t have a good mental model for why that is. It remains mysterious to me, even when I end up teasing people or getting teased myself.
The curious thing is, in English at least, we use same word for a completely other kind of behavior, one I understand better.
I’m talking about stringing somebody along for a while, leading them by the nose, revealing bits and pieces but not giving the whole thing away.
This second kind of teasing is equally as powerful as the first kind. As copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote:
19) One of the most powerful tools in marketing is the tease. It could be as “small” as 2-3 lines of copy that build up a reveal. It could be as “large” as dangling a new product release in front of existing customers FOR MONTHS (<—do this often and you’ll be able fly private to Hawaii to thank me personally).
This was part of an email Dan sent out a few days ago.
Dan doesn’t email a lot. But he’s sure to do so at least once a year.
Each year, on his birthday, Dan sends out X direct marketing lessons to match his X years on the earth. He just turned 37 and so he shared 37 lessons.
Maybe you knew that already. Maybe you missed out.
If you did miss out, then let me tell you Dan’s birthday emails generally include no illustrations. Only valuable insights.
I’ve found they merit reading and rereading. I sometimes come to a smart conclusion, and only then realize that it’s something Dan had written years earlier in one of these emails. It finally make sense.
The thing is, Dan doesn’t post his emails anywhere publicly. And if you want to sign up for his email list, so you get any future emails he sends, whether for his next birthday or sooner, well, even that’s a problem. His optin page wasn’t working when I last checked it.
It might be worth checking again now. Or tomorrow. Or in a few months’ time. How’s that for a tease? Here’s the link in case you’re intrigued: