Question headline

The pattern

This still is filed under Question headline.

Define

The first line is a question the reader was already asking, or one they cannot leave unanswered.

Mechanism

Open loop plus recognition. A good question is the reader's objection, spoken first by us.

Verdict

We know the real objection and can answer it in the next breath.

Why it works

The headline asks a yes or no question and the copy answers both: if you read the first issue, you need no persuading to read the second; if you did not, ask someone who did, and do not let the next one pass. Either answer ends at the next issue, and the second one hands the selling to the reader's friends. A slogan, laugh and the world laughs with you, a line on its writers and cartoonists, and a fixed day of issue, Tuesday, finish the job in very few words.

The big idea

Whether or not you read the first issue of al-Fukaha, the answer leads to the same place: do not let the next one pass you by.

The offer

al-Fukaha, a humour magazine out every Tuesday, under the slogan laugh and the world laughs with you. Read the second issue and do not miss the next. No price given.

The proof

It is edited by a select group of leading writers and cartoonists.

Lines from the ad

هل طالعت اول عدد من الفكاهة

Have you read the first issue of al-Fukaha

أما اذا كنت لم تطالعه فاسأل من طالعه عن رأيه فيه

And if you have not read it, ask someone who has what they thought of it

اضحك يضحك لك العالم

Laugh and the world laughs with you

Steal this when

Launching the second episode or issue of something new, when the first has some readers and you want them to recruit the rest.

The emotion

Written to Trust. It makes the Say move.

Readers who missed issue one are told to ask someone who read it, so a friend's verdict, not the magazine's, is the check before the next Tuesday issue.