I’ve mentioned before how top copywriters like John Carlton and David Garfinkel recommend regularly studying popular publications like “National Enquirer” and “Cosmopolitan” to glean ideas for headlines, stories, trivia and tidbits of potentially useful information to weave into copy.
And I’ve occasionally posted examples of “Strange But True” stories that have caught my eye and that provide some creative inspiration.
Well, not sure if it’s simply because of the slow summer season in the northern hemisphere, but I noticed a number of intriguing stories over the last week and I’ve decided to run an occasional column with a selection of these gems.
So I offer these items for your amusement and inspiration…
First up the amazing “Monkeys use trees to catapault themselves out of Japanese laboratory”.
Next…
… this one has it all… “Sex, voodoo and the murder of hotel heir Ben Novack Jr”. James Ellroy, eat your heart out!
Can they be serious about “Armour made from ‘bullet-proof custard'”??
Finally, for today, a “World Cup” story. This has been making the news pretty much everywhere, from what I can see, so you’re probably familiar with Paul, the “Psychic Octopus”. Paul has been correctly “forecasting” every round of the competition so far. He’s picked Spain to win the final, so we’ll see tomorrow if he’s managed to maintain his incredible record.
There’s a serious copywriting and marketing point to these examples, of course. Curiosity is one of the most powerful triggers driving human action and the bizarre and unusual grabs people’s attention. You can use examples like the stories I’ve mentioned as models to grab the attention of your readers and lead them into your sales message.
Of course, the art is to legitimately link the story to your product or service, otherwise you’ll most likely lose your reader.
UPDATE (12 July 2010):
Well, the “Psychic Octopus” did it! Spain beat Holland 1-0 as predicted making it a straight 8 from 8 correct predictions!
“100 per cent for Paul the psychic octopus”
Now, the mathematician in me begs to point out that this could be a complete fluke and is not necessarily evidence of predictive powers on the part of the “mystic mollusc”. However, the odds of 8 correct picks in a row are 1 in 256…so this is pretty spooky!