I recently learned about the “translation problem” in persuasion.
For example, if I recommend a movie to you (like I did in my post a few days ago), you don’t really know whether to take that recommendation.
After all, my taste in movies is probably not the same as yours. I might also be recommending the movie for some reason you don’t care about (like learning better storytelling).
In other words, when I tell you a movie is great and you should watch it, you have to translate what that really means for you.
But there’s another way to look at this problem, which is more relevant for every-cent-counts direct marketing.
Specifically, I’m talking about the marketer’s job of translating a message into language his reader cares about, or at least understands.
I gave an example of this in yesterday’s post. In 1983, President Reagan got convinced of the importance of cyber security. A part of how this happened was the format of that persuasive message — a story, as told in the movie WarGames.
But another part of this persuasive message was that cyber security — a non-issue in 1983 — was translated into the threat of nuclear war.
Think about this for a moment. Another story probably wouldn’t have worked. A movie in which a hacker controls a weather satellite for a business man’s evil plans (Superman III, also from 1983) probably wouldn’t have gotten Reagan to take action on cyber security.
So what’s that point here?
It’s the old story. It was financier Bernard Baruch who, according to copywriting legend, summed up what it means to persuade:
“Find out what people want, and show them how to get it.”
Except, there are many situations in today’s sophisticated market where you don’t want to make overt promises. So instead of focusing on the positive outcome, you focus on the negative present. In that case, the real translation problem of persuasion becomes:
“Find out what people are afraid of, and show them how to avoid it.”
But whatever you do, don’t put out a message and hope your reader will translate it into terms he cares about. That’s your job. As copywriting coach David Garfinkel likes to say, “Either you work and get paid, or your reader works and gets paid.”
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