No ‘Knows’ in Copywriting – why are so many brands still voicing their assumptions?
Here at The Drum, we know that you enjoy brown soup, trombones and films where Liam Neeson beats up strangers. What’s that you say? You don’t enjoy these strange and horrible things? There appears to have been some kind of terrible mistake.
Yet your faithful columnist is not the only character to make this error. Poke your snout into the sludgy, steaming heap labelled ‘Marketing and That’ and you will quickly snuffle out brands and businesses earnestly describing the things they ‘know’ you like.
Gas companies, airlines, insurers and cheese shops all profess knowledge of your fondness for heat, holidays, health and halloumi respectively.
It’s a copywriting ruse forged in the same era as ‘Cigarettes: Better Than Women’. Which probably suggests it has little place in modern marketing.
Depending on how far you choose to believe in the portrait of a modern, informed, inquiring consumer, there is room to question who exactly is responding to the audacious presumptions of a brand.
It’d be naive to suggest that modern advertising isn’t still directly shaping the attitudes and actions of at least a portion of spongier and more pliable minds. But it seems incongruous to assume that any degree of real persuasion can take place from such presumptuous beginnings.
That’s not to say that brands who claim to know ‘this or that’ about their customers are behaving with any kind of conceit – nor are they attempting to affect some insidious manipulation on our frail and swooning minds. It comes from a, perhaps reasonable, desire to demonstrate understanding. And yet invariably it comes across as just another sheep-herding exercise from one of those ‘big brands’ we’re told not to accept sweets from on the way home from school.
It’s perhaps the construct of the words rather than the sentiment that causes the problems. To claim ‘Here at X we know you Y’ is, in the sensitive relationship between word and reader, about as passively-antagonistic as you can be. Effectively it is saying ‘No need to think, we’ll do it for you’. As a communication strategy, I imagine it draws reactions ranging from an unhappy tut to some indignant souls tearing off their own lips.
Perhaps then it’s one of those happy occasions where we wheel out a well-weathered piece of slightly imprecise copywriting advice. Perhaps, if you believe you know your customer, it is better to demonstrate it rather than say it.
If you believe wholeheartedly that your reader loves spanners and tiny mints, then build references to these items of delight into the tone, spirit and purpose of your copy. By all means explain their place at the heart of your offering, just avoid anything that even smells faintly like an expression of ‘we know you better than your mum’. Aim for a reaction of ‘Oh wow! I like spanners and tiny mints too’ rather than ‘Sh*t off with your spanners and tiny mints, I like fog and canoes. YOU DON’T KNOW ME etc.’
As a crude (and actually presumptuous) rule of my inky thumb, I would say that people don’t like being told who they are. Just like the way you hate small clouds, ‘Take Me Out’ and swans. Admit it, you know it’s true.
Follow Andrew on Twitter and he will make no effort to know the things you like