If-then promise

The pattern

This still is filed under If-then promise.

Define

A conditional contract: if you do this, you get that. The sentence can be tested against the reader's own case.

Mechanism

Specificity does the persuading. The if names the action. The then names the outcome. Hedging kills it.

Verdict

We can name both the action and the result without adjectives

Why it works

The comic strip is camouflage: it matches the medium it is printed in, so a reader consumes the sales argument as a story before noticing it is an ad. The narrative is built on three public humiliations in sequence, kitchen, job, beach, which lets the reader find whichever one is his own, and each is resolved by the same single mechanism. The strip ends on a trophy and a named venue, converting a personal story into a verifiable public event. Only after the story is finished does the copy switch to first person and ask for the coupon, so the request arrives after the belief has been built rather than before it.

The big idea

Charles Atlas was once a 97-pound weakling pitied at home, turned away from work and outshone at the beach, and the method that rebuilt him can rebuild the reader.

The offer

A free book, Everlasting Health and Strength, for the coupon sent to Charles Atlas, Dept. 7711, New York; readers under 16 tick a box for Booklet A. The method takes 15 minutes a day.

The proof

A guarantee of results in the first 7 days, an actual photo of the title holder, the Madison Square Garden contest win, and thousands of users in the services and civilian life.

Lines from the ad

HOW A 97-Lb. WEAKLING Became the "WORLD'S MOST PERFECTLY DEVELOPED MAN"

I Can Make You A New Man, Too, In Only 15 Minutes A Day!

I KNOW, MOM. THE FELLOWS ARE CALLING ME "THE WEAKLING!"

Steal this when

Use this when your proof is a founder transformation and your audience is humiliated rather than merely dissatisfied. Sequence the humiliations as scenes in the reader's own life, resolve them with one mechanism, and only ask after the story lands.

The emotion

Written to Shame. It makes the Avoid mistake.

The comic strip stages three public humiliations, pitied at home, turned away from work, outshone at the beach, and the cry that the fellows call him the weakling makes the reader's body the problem.

Puts the problem on the reader