Are You a Guesswork Advertiser? (4 page images)
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 structure is an interrogation. Six questions run in sequence, narrowing from the general to the uncomfortably specific, and the reader is meant to fail them. Failing is the diagnosis, and guesswork advertiser is the label he now has to wear, which creates the problem the folder is about to solve. The insult is then displaced in time rather than aimed at the man: guesswork belongs back in the early nineties, in the Dark Ages of Advertising, so the reader is merely out of date rather than foolish, which is far easier to accept. The ask is sized to match, a card rather than a decision, with the risk explicitly stripped out. The photographed owl converts the engraved trademark into a live animal staring the reader down while he is being questioned.
Steal this when
Use this when the prospect already buys your category and thinks he has it handled, so a benefit pitch bounces. Open with a short run of diagnostic questions he cannot answer, name the condition that failing them produces, and ask only for a free, low-commitment visit.