I haven’t run into a recent print ad sporting a “Who Else Wants?” headline in a long time. Maybe there’s a reason for that.
Online however, it seems like most offers for yesterday’s obsolete doohickey come today’s big launch, embrace this headline as their sole method of attack.
It’s origin supposedly comes from: “Who Else Wants a Screen Star Figure?” I haven’t been able to find the original ad.
The idea behind it is the power of social proof. Everyone else is doing it. Why not you?
Undoubtedly, it worked well in this 47 year old Wall Street Journal ad which had numerous insertions. This ad combined the social proof trigger with a laser honed, qualifying sub-head.
But now it’s time to put it to rest.
This headline is so overused that instead of grabbing attention, it repels it. By definition, if most marketing messages look the same, they cannot be effective.
The good news is even the Neanderthal marketers who mindlessly swipe each other don’t have to evolve to hike response. Not much anyway.
All they need are some new headline templates.
Let’s use Mel Martin’s brilliant and “unknown in 2007” approach.
With it, we can transform the Neanderthal version into a fresh and more powerful approach.
Neanderthal version:
Who else wants more website traffic?
New approach (based on Mel Martin):
For website owners who are almost (but not quite) satisfied with their traffic volume — and can’t figure out how to get more:
What I like about Mel Martin’s headline is it strikes a chord that almost everyone feels. Things are okay but whatever it is that can make them better is somehow eluding us.
I’m doing some split tests with Mel’s headlines right now and they are kicking tail.
At last… I finally have an answer to a “Who else…” headline that I can live with. YES, I’d love to see it retired. But not just for overuse, though this has got to be one of the front-runners in that category.
The thing that bothers me about it more is that it’s used in that automatic sense, where the actual product is nearly irrelevant to the strategy. Most template approaches are.
Don’t get me wrong.
I love what you’re doing here with the swipe file. I recommended that readers of my ezine, the Copywriter’s Roundtable, even come check it out. Because what you’re offering here is something that enriches our understanding of how to originate a good pitch.
But those whose entire approach to copywriting is to simply rip off what someone else accomplished before them, well… it’s not only not an honest day’s work, it shortchanges the client. And the writer himself.
Gene Schwartz covered the concept of writing headlines with templates in his great “Breakthrough Advertising” book. He follows that up with a long section on headlines written according to tried and true formulas. And gives advice on how to do both.
But in the end, he makes it clear that the only real way to write a breakthrough headline requires a very individual and original, new analysis of the product and the target market.
It’s really the only way.
Thanks for all the great material in this blog!
John Forde
Great post. I hate these things too. You should do a whole series on bad modern implementations of old popular headlines and how to fix them.
Next up… “They Laughed…”
What is new in this world? Every bit of the so called New thing is a rehash of something that fascinated many in the distant past.Asian traditional wisdom believes that the world as we know now is also in its umpteenth reinacarnation. Great civilisations arose, flourished and perished at the hands of some super smart alec who had his own interpretation of what was right for the world.
What we as creative writers need to keep in mind is that familiarity breeds contempt and so keep rotating the tools at hand, and the novelty( apparent) will take care of the rest.