Answer These 3 Questions Before Prospects Lose Interest

Plus: What NOT to do while precious time is ticking away

Sep 08, 2023

In my basic formula for scripts that sell, step two is “introduce the product and describe it.” This sounds rather mundane, but it is possible to screw it up. How? By not being clear about what you’re offering. Remember: Confusion is a sales killer.™

To avoid this pitfall, I developed a rule of thumb years ago. In the first 30 seconds of a commercial, I always try to answer these three questions:

What is it?
What does it do?
Why is it different?

Why 30 seconds? My reasoning is that this is the maximum attention span of the average viewer. We’ve all been watching 30-second TV ads for decades, which means we’ve been trained by general advertisers to expect this unit length — on linear TV and now connected TV, which I’m told only offers 30-second slots (no 60s or 120s). This fact about the average viewer may change as the younger generation matures and TikTok-length videos become the norm. (Or maybe not.) But today, it still applies.

To see how answering these three questions works in practice, let’s consider a Promising Product from a few weeks ago. Only premium subscribers have seen this ‘product with potential’, which makes it a good time to remind the rest of you to…

Here’s the product:

Let’s imagine we’re making a video ad for this product. The ad will start and the clock will be ticking. We have 30 seconds max. What do we do?

Well, we know what we don’t want to do. We don’t want to waste time with jokes and gimmicks. That is, we’re going to lose people if we try to entertain or amuse them. We may get a smile or a laugh, but as the great Claude Hopkins put it: “People don’t buy from clowns.” (David Ogilvy liked that line so much, he put it in one of his books.)

Alvin Eicoff also had a version of this advice:

Too many copywriters don’t understand that when they write a commercial they are knocking on someone’s door and asking to come into their living room. If they would use this frame of reference, they wouldn’t come into the living room with animated beavers, chorus lines, or semipornographic models.

So what’s the correct approach? As Kantar research has shown in the realm of digital advertising (where avoiding ad-skipping is a primary goal), “you need to intrigue viewers early on and give a compelling reason for them to continue watching.” Kantar says the best way to do this is to evoke a strong emotion — and that’s where the problem opening comes in.

By cleverly dramatizing a real problem our prospects face in their daily lives, we can hit a marketing trifecta: 1) intrigue them, 2) generate a strong emotion (e.g. frustration, disgust, embarrassment), and 3) build instant rapport.

For this product, we might go with something like, “Are you sick and tired of pet hair everywhere? On your couch? On your carpet? On your clothes? On your guests’ clothes?” while showing increasingly dramatic, desaturated horror scenes of fur covering everything.

OK, so we have the viewer’s attention. “That’s me!” she is thinking while reflexing nodding her her head in agreement. Now what?

The very next thing we want to do is get to the point and tell her what we are selling. Here’s where my three questions come in:

What is it?
Their Amazon headline nails it: It’s a “multi-surface fur removal tool.”
What does it do?
It cleans up shed fur quickly and easily.
Why is it different?
No need to clean the brush — just press the button.

In a few lines of copy, these three answers might come together as follows:

The Magic Roller is a multi-surface fur removal tool that makes cleaning up fur fast and easy. Simply roll it over any surface to make it ‘fur free’ in seconds. Then, press the button to drop all that fur right in the trash. No more messy adhesives or sticky tape. No need to spend time cleaning the brush after you clean the house.

So: How well do advertisements on the air today answer my three questions? Below I examine a few from the latest DRMetrix report and, where relevant, suggest ways to improve them.

Bionic Spotlight

What is it?
An “outdoor motion-sensor light”
What does it do?
“Automatically turns on the instant motion is detected and turns off when the motion stops”
Why is it different?
“It’s solar-powered, so there’s no expensive wiring or batteries to change”

I give this one an A. It nails my three questions and does so within the 30-second window. Only Question #3 might deserve more attention. That is, I’m not sure “solar-powered” is enough of a point of difference to get people excited these days.

Inscents Waterfall

What is it?
A “beautiful way to feel like your stress and anxiety are melting away”
What does it do?
“Smokes cascades down the waterfall bringing calm and relaxation to all”
Why is it different?
It’s “100% natural” and they “soak every cone in 100% pure essential oils”

I give this one a C. Question #1 isn’t really answered until they compare the product to “ordinary incense burners.” While the name is a clue, that clue will be lost on many because of the clever spelling. This doesn’t look like an incense burner, so people need to be told that it is.

They do mention lighting the “incense cone” fairly early in the spot, but I doubt most people know about such things. Indeed, the whole concept of incense burning probably won’t be familiar to most people.

Question #3 is addressed, but I’m not sure the answer has any selling power. Do people really care that ordinary incense uses “sawdust and other fillers”? Do they care about the purity of essential oils? On the other hand, maybe people don’t need an answer to my third question because this commercial is all about the visual.

So how would I improve this commercial? Building off that last comment, I wouldn’t waste any time telling people what they can clearly see. Forget the visual copy (e.g. “smokes cascades”). Maybe even forget Question #3 altogether. Clearly answer Question #1 — perhaps by educating a bit about incense and its history — and then get to the lifestyle scenes sooner.

Heck, this might even be a case where a 60 sells just as well as a 120. I’d test unit length in an A/B split and wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be true.

Contour Swan Pillow

What is it?
They don’t say
What does it do?
“Cradles you from head to toe for the best night’s sleep of your life”
Why is it different?
The “unique orthopedic shape supports your back, shoulders, head, neck, arms. hips, knees, ankles and feet”

I give this one a B because of Question #1. I get it. They don’t want to call it a “pillow” because that seems limiting. And perhaps, here again, the visual rescues the opening. You can see what it is. Plus, there’s a strong promise (the answer to Question #2) and a strong point of difference (the answer to Question #3) that is covered comprehensively before the 30-second mark.

So how would I improve this commercial? I’m not sure I have a good answer. When Allstar did Side Sleeper Pro, we used to call this a “candy cane pillow.” That’s cute, but it’s also risky from a marketing perspective. Come to think of it, “side-sleeper pillow” gets the job done. So does “full-body pillow.” That latter one actually incorporates the point of difference nicely and sets up the “back, shoulders, head,” etc. scene that comes in later.

News(letters) You Can Use

Is there scientific research supporting my claim that you should “start with a painful problem”? It seems so. We turn once again to the super-useful Ariyh newsletter, which reports this week on a 2013 article in the Journal of Consumer Research that found when a product is positioned “next to an image of the problem it solves,” people were “up to 26% more likely to choose it.”

Thomas McKinlay’s complete summary of the research can be found here.

Double hit today! Another newsletter I just started reading called Psychology of Marketing featured this little nugget of wisdom in its latest edition:

“If your marketing emails don’t have a PS section, you need to start experimenting with it.”

The reason is something known as the Serial Position Effect. From the summary of the 1960s research papers that established the effect:

Experiments show that when participants are presented with a list of words, they tend to remember the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list.

Capitalizing on that insight by using a ‘P.S. pitch’ in a marketing email makes a lot of sense. I guess the DR version is “but wait! there’s more!”?

Gel Enhanced Seat Cushion

#1 Best Seller | 4.4 stars on 95k+ ratings

I teased this section above, so I had to deliver for any new premium subscribers. Yes, this item has been done before. That’s exactly why I am calling it out. As of today, it is a Top 10 bestseller in Automotive. Also of note: It is #1 in the sub-category “Wheelchair & Mobility Scooter Cushions.” That gives you a clear idea of why such cushions have been successful on DRTV for decades: They hit the center of the bull’s-eye for the older demographic.

So what’s the potential play? A simple Old Gold bring-back could do the trick. The last hit was Perfect Cushion in 2019. Only two years before that, Miracle Bamboo Cushion landed solidly on the 2017 True Top 50. Four years before that, Forever Comfy topped the annual charts.

Conclusion: There seems to be no waiting period for bringing back this kind of product. All that’s needed is a different twist and success is all but assured.

(Research this item further on Amazon. )

Piezano

Pitch: “Make the world’s most delicious pizza with real stone right in your home”
Offer: 3 pay of $49.99 with free shipping
Brand: Granitestone
Marketer: Emson
Producer: Hutton Miller

Kudos to whomever named this product. Clever and amusing! As the industry’s self-proclaimed historian, I also appreciated “set it, and let it …” An inside joke to be sure, but it made me smile. A less creative (and less ethical) writer would have simply stolen the classic Ron Popeil line.

As for the product, I’m not sure about the market for these items. On the low end, no pizza item has ever done well enough to get anyone excited because it’s just too easy and inexpensive to order a pizza. On the higher end, there’s more of a case to be made. I see several fancy ‘patio pizza ovens’ at Home Depot and online from brands such as Solo Stove and Blackstone. Here, the market shrinks considerably. But for people who enjoy the idea of taking the time to make homemade pizza, this commercial will no doubt resonate — and it can be used indoors.

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The Formula for Scripts That Sell

Start with a painful problem
(Article: Ask the ‘Skeptic's Question’ to Check & Fix Your Opening Pitch)
Introduce the product and describe it
(Article: Answer These 3 Questions Before Prospects Lose Interest)
Explain how the product solves the opening problem
(Article: Pay Off the Problem Opening to Powerfully Position Your Product)
Describe the product’s key features and benefits
(Article: Don't Be Misled By the Order of Things)
Briefly list all of the key uses for the product
(Article: This Space Intentionally Left Blank)
Explain how the product works
(Article: Here’s How 'Here’s How it Works' Works)
Set up a value comparison and introduce the offer
(Article: The Incomparable Value Comparison)
Introduce a bonus and describe it
(Article: Instantly Boost Sales by Leveraging the ‘Mooch Factor’)
Recap the entire offer
(Article: The Department of Redundancy Department)
Create a sense of urgency and ask for the order
(Article: The Simple Secret to Closing More Sales)

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