Have we done something wrong?

That was the question the National Geographic Society put right I front of me, on the envelope. My answer was “Yes!” But I did not give it t them.

This is about brain-based marketing. A subset, you will recall, of brain-based communication. The catch phrase here is:

Market with the brain in mind!

The opening move was good. A quest question (= a question that sends you on a search through your brain.) That’s what made me open the envelope. I suspected, of course, that this question was just a marketing device to get my attention. But I was curious about how smart their marketing support was. Turned out they used up all their smarts on that opening line.

The back story on this is that I have been subscribing to National Geographic for more than 25 years. This year, I decided not to renew.

Turned out, this was just a membership renewal form. The letter opened with a description of the good things about National Geographic.

You can see the smarts shortage right there. I had been a subscriber. I had ample opportunity to experience these good things. Why would they now need to tell me about them?

Now, back to that opening question. You could have expected (if you were new to marketing schemes) that they wanted an answer. But, of course, there is no place for an answer. Instead, after telling me about those good things in National Geographic, the copy goes on about how they are not used to losing members and about how good they are.

A belief in Word Magic seems to be an occupational hazard of writing ad copy. Somehow, if you just say the right incantations, you will enlist the powers of lightness to get people to do what you want. Now let's try a little brain-based analysis.

This communication comes to me as part of my experience. The opening line would attract my attention because generally try to answer questions. But I quickly find that they are not interested in my answer. They simply want to tell me how good they are. They use the question as a device to get me to look at their mailing. And they think I am not smart enough to figure this out.

Try it for yourself. Ask someone a question and then walk away before they can answer. Or better yet, ask them what is wrong with you and then, without letting them answer, start talking about how good you are. You won’t do either of these things. You will run the story in the theater of your mind. You will probably cringe at the reaction you get from the person you conjure up in your imagination.

The marvel is that the people who wrote this copy are quite capable of doing the mental test I just described. And they would get the results I described. So why did they write it? My theory is that if you can’t write copy that sells, you write copy to suck up to management. I use that theory as a game sometimes. Is this copy a seller or a suck-up? Management gets to be the judge.

Now what does this have to do with homework? I’ll leave that as a quest question.