Has Science Finally Cracked the Copywriting Code?

April 28, 2023

In This Issue:

🔬 SEO: Explore how moderately surprising syntax in ad copy may boost product sales.

📣 Advertising: Consumers are protesting brands accused of 'greedflation' and engaging in public controversies.

📌 Commerce: Pinterest announces a multiyear ads partnership with Amazon, paving the way for new advertising opportunities on the platform.

📉 Revenue: Snap's sales fall for the first time since becoming a public company, raising questions about the platform's future growth.

🚫 Legal: State attorneys general lose their bid to revive the Facebook antitrust case, allowing the social media giant to avoid further scrutiny.

📲 Trends: A new TikTok trend called 'sludge content' has Gen Z hooked.

🔘 Features: LinkedIn adds new custom CTA buttons to LinkedIn Premium member profiles.

The "Moderately Surprising" Secret to Copywriting

As marketers, coming up with just the right ad copy, the perfect turn of phrase, the clever but understated sales pitch… that’s the art in what we do, right? 

But what if we could reproduce it... measure it with a metric: Turn that art into science.

Consider an ad for recruitment. Two versions: 

  • Apply today to join a great team! and

  • Join a great team, apply today!

They’re almost the same, right? But the structure of that offer, known as the syntax, is different. Can you tell which one would get more job applications?

Selin Atalay can. She is a Professor of Marketing at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Frankfurt. She recently co-authored a research paper called Creating Effective Marketing Messages Through Moderately Surprising Syntax.

Tod spoke with her earlier this week.

DR. ATALAY: There's so much competition now for consumers' attention and consumers taking action, be it in the form of clicking on a headline, clicking on an ad, or opening an email and reading it. 

So we started thinking: What are the drivers of getting people to do what you want them to do in a message? How can you design effective communication so that people do what you want them to do? 

A lot of our attention so far has been paid into the style of the message — how is it communicated? What are the words that you choose? How do you make the story interesting? What's the story that you tell? [Marketers] think a lot about the content. 

But [marketers] don't pay as much attention to how we formulate the words. 

Of course, there's some research in syntax and its complexity, but we thought, there seems to be more to it. 

TOD: Your findings came down to something called "syntactic surprise." What does that mean?

DR. ATALAY: Let me explain with an example. The way we process language is word by word. So as words come to us, we start building it up. Each word we encounter, in our minds, we set an expectation as to what is going to come next. 

For example, if I start with "I", then you would probably expect that I'm going to say "I am." And if I say "I am," you expect that I'm going to say "I am Selin". This is how we process. 

[To use a marketing example,] if I say "Amazon," and I say "Amazon delivers," then you start expecting that I'm going to say some [products]. This is the most common expectation that you would have. 

Surprises is when whatever you say is not compliant with the expectations. 

So if I continue "Amazon delivers" with "Amazon delivers fast," that's not what you expected. 

It's not wrong. It is still correct to say "Amazon delivers fast" or "Amazon delivers reliably," but it's unexpected. It's surprising. And that does something to the brain....

If it's unexpected, I'm intrigued, I keep paying attention. But if it's too unexpected, I don't know what to do with it; I check out. So it's finding that happy, moderate place.

TOD: It doesn't sound easy. 

DR. ATALAY: It's not. That's why we had to develop a metric to help people out.

In their full conversation, Tod and Selin talk about the details of that metric, the online calculator she built to help copywriters identify their own level of syntactic surprise — that’s a calculator you can use for free, by the way — plus her thoughts on how this works for offline media, and how AI-generated copy could change the marketing industry.

Their full conversation is coming exclusively to the Premium feed tomorrow. You can sign up now by going to TodayInDigital.com/premium.

Consumers Ready to Ditch Brands Over 'Greedflation'

Are you taking a little extra profit while you can? Your customers think you are.

Four out of five consumers now think brands are involved in 'greedflation' — defined as using inflation as an excuse to hike prices.

A recent survey found 90% of consumers said they're willing to ditch their preferred brands due to price pressures. 60% said more needs to be done to protect consumers from brands that use this tactic.

Shoppers have the least loyalty toward grocery brands, as food and beverage brands were cited as the type of products consumers are most likely to switch to save money, followed by:

  • Clothing and shoes

  • Tobacco and alcohol ranked lower

❌ Negative Experiences Drive Brand Abandonment

The study also found that public controversies directly affect brand loyalty, and more than half of consumers want businesses to be honest and clearly outline their plans to resolve problems.

Most said that a public apology would make them happy, but there are other things that matter to customers, including:

  • Removing an employee responsible for a mess-up

  • Offering a discount or refund 

  • Providing a complaint service

Speed of response is also important to some consumers, with more than a third willing to wait for a brand to issue a statement before deciding on a response. And a quarter would boycott or stop buying a brand’s products and services immediately due to a controversy.

(Data has been provided by Attest's survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers)

Images: Attest 

Pinterest 🤝 Amazon Ads

Pinterest announced a new ad partnership with the biggest e-commerce company in the world yesterday, which will let Amazon advertisers expand their campaigns to the social platform. 

When users click on an Amazon ad on Pinterest, they will be directed to the e-commerce site to complete their purchase. This is a smoother buying experience for consumers, as most Amazon shoppers already have their payment information on file with the company, meaning faster checkouts.

It is not yet clear where the ads will appear to end users on Pinterest. But the company says the integration of Amazon ads will take place over multiple quarters, starting later this year.

Snap's Q1: Revenue Down; User Growth Up

Snap's quarterly results are in – the company reported yesterday that its revenue had fallen for the first time since going public.

In the first quarter, revenue was just shy of a billion dollars, but that's down 7% from the same period in the prior year, falling short of Wall Street's expectations. The company says demand for its ads was “disrupted” by upgrades it made to its ad-selling platform. Snap recorded a net loss of $330 million.

As a result, Snap's stock plummeted by over 20% during yesterday's after-hours trading. 

Despite its woes, daily users keep climbing. The number of Snapchat’s daily users grew to over 380 million, a 15% increase over last year.

Image: Snap 

Court Rejects Bid to Revive Antitrust Case Against Meta

Meta survives to win another legal fight.

Dozens of American states were trying to revive an antitrust case against Meta, which accused the company of monopolizing the marketplace by acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram.

Well, those revival attempts have been denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals in a 3-0 ruling yesterday. 

The judge said that the state attorneys general waited too long to challenge the transactions and referred to the lawsuit as "not only odd but old," given the rapid growth and innovation in the social networking market. 

This decision is the latest setback for government efforts to pursue Big Tech companies on antitrust grounds. However, the Federal Trade Commission still has a pending case against Meta with similar allegations. The core allegation in both cases is that Facebook unlawfully suppressed competition by buying up potential rivals, and the FTC is seeking to unwind those deals. 

A Meta spokesperson praised the ruling and said the company would fight the pending litigation by the FTC.

‘Sludge Content’: Your Next Brand Campaign?

Who needs costly influencer partnerships when you can just up your brand's marketing game with 'sludge content'? 

🤯 WTF is Sludge Content? 

Business Insider reported today that 'Sludge content' is becoming a popular trend on TikTok, with creators combining two or more unrelated videos in a single multiscreen format. The resulting videos have polarized users, with some criticizing their lack of substance while others find them addictively entertaining.

Several creators on the platform have even mocked the trend for being limited to Gen Z audiences. 

Sludge = 🚀

But some believe the format is effective in retaining viewers for longer periods. And TikTok's algorithm appears to prioritize videos that have a longer retention time, meaning the longer a video is watched the more reach it is likely to get.

The concept is that if a viewer loses interest in one clip, they could redirect their focus toward the other one. Others simply attribute the new trend to mindless escapism.

Is this something you'd try on your brand account?

LinkedIn: CTA Link on Profiles 

And finally, LinkedIn is introducing a new feature for its Premium Subscribers, that lets them add a Call to Action button on their profile that directs visitors to a specific URL. 

The 'Custom Button' option will be available in the profile settings of paying subscribers and offers six preset CTA options, including:

  • Visit my store

  • Request a consultation

  • Sign up for a demo

  • And more

Image: LinkedIn

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