5 Methods To Get Weirdly Specific When Writing Copy
I’m crumpling ideas in my white chair, staring at the blank doc sheet.
I’ve already pored over all the A3 pages with the initial bad headlines, and my floors are covered in black writing on white sheets. Now it’s time. I’m gnashing my teeth, panicking about what’s to jump out of my fingers. My white keyboard is laughing at me.
I’m looking over the pages again, and writing down what I can rescue from that dross.
Sound familiar?
Once you’ve passed the initial brainstorming, a few hours of la-la-la-la writing everything you can think about without caring about a thing, now it’s time to pull a flow of sense out of your brain like Dumbledore pulled Harry Potter’s memories with his wand.
So how do you do that?
I’ve come to learn 5 methods to get weirdly specific when writing copy.
For this article, I have chosen a brand called Zencore – a plant-based supplement for calm focus, made for creatives like you.
Let’s start with the first method.
The – What would I complain about if I were the customer? – method
Let’s start with this unique selling proposition: Zencore is the only plant-based supplement made of 6 synergistic adaptogens that help you focus when you need to.
Instead of thinking like someone who wants to sell this, I’ll put on the grumpy customer shoes on. What would annoy me if I weren’t using the product, but I couldn’t focus for one hour straight?
Well, I would probably say stuff like: “I can’t sit still long enough to write this damn email.”
Or: “All the coffee in the world can’t fix my brain fog.”
So now I’m going to my list and say I have 2 good enough ideas that I can polish. Maybe one of them sounds something like: 10+ tabs open in my mind, and the other one: never get to burnout
I’m then writing down the premise like it would be a headline in a news magazine: No more mental fatigue from 10 tabs open at one time. Zencore supplement helps you focus for 5 hours straight.
If I’m thinking about the first tagline, I may come up with something like:
“If your brain has 15 tabs open and one of them is playing music — Zencore’s for you.”
Zencore is for you, sounds like the door-to-door sales man that comes uninvited.
I’m thinking I could cut that, leave just the first part, and add a visual that would complete my imaginary banner perfectly. Write Take a Zencore below the visual, as a subheading. Or simply Zencore.
Ok now I can see something that I would like to breeze my community with, and I would even smile when seeing it.
It’s relatable to most people, although when I thought about this, I had in mind one person – the tired creative, maybe with a dash od ADHD that can’t keep his thoughts together, and have 3 hours straight when he doesn’t check his phone or bite his nails. Just work. He also might be a she and have hormonal brain fog.
Yes BUT, I wouldn’t want to make it seem like only women have brain fog. It’s an actual problem of gen Z, millennials, and boomers alike.
So I thought better be gender neutral, and simply address this creative person, however they might identify as.
Then I came up with a second tagline idea: Your brain can focus for 5 hours straight – 1 tab, at a time.
All fair and square so far, I came up with one premise and 2 taglines, all from thinking about something my buyer persona would complain about. So let’s see the second method.
Steal the Amazon review method
Amazon is a field of colorful flowers, many of them are from the same species, some other species, but they’re all flowers that, in this case, talk about a similar product.
Try typing in Amazon “adaptogenic food supplement”, pick a few best sellers, and scroll to the review section.
Go to positive and one-star reviews as well.
Highlight every emotional phrase: “I finally feel like I can sit still without being anxious.”
or, “This doesn’t give me that awful caffeine crash.”
This gives me the direction and a peek in my ideal customer’s mind. Kind of like that Dumbledore wand, but this time Harry Potter isn’t me, but thousands of buyers.
From these two lines above, I could say something like:
Your focus shouldn’t come with a crash warning.
I always liked the idea of packing someone’s fear and turning it into a movement. Unfortunately, negative emotions impact us way more than positive ones.
And people remember a bad day more than a good one. It comes up in stories, can be tied to all kind of unfortunate events which can lead to a funny tale.
It’s my experience that fun can rarely come out of: So one day I woke up, I inhaled deeply, and I felt the sun touching my skin, as I sat in my yoga pose surrounded by healing crystals.
I go as in depth as I need with Amazon reviews. I could sit for hours. I guess it depends on your deadline.
Flip the product
In this method, I’m trying to flip the premise to the dark side.
What happens if you don’t take Zencore? What happens if I have 10 tabs open at the same time? And if I get to burnout before an important pitch day?
Chaos. Burnout. Staring at the wall at 3 PM.
Inbox full. Reading a sentence 4 times just to wonder what is wrong with you.
It takes 1 hour just to reply to a few emails.
Oh, and there it is – the holy sanctity of feedback coming your way, where the client wants “minor changes” which lead to your idea being fed to some evil fairies with big teeth.
Oh. And the meeting takes at least 40 minutes.
That leaves you almost drained. And now you have to get into creativity with a 50% battery?
Nah. This is not a life worth living.
It’s a challenge to find where that one piece of gold copy hides. Thinking about how the people who face these problems live, and how do they cope, is so useful. I try to find podcasts related to discussions about a certain lifestyle.
Once I have my list with enough dreadful affirmations, I try to come up with some distilled ideas:
Zencore: Just the thing that keeps you from yelling at your inbox.
The wall across your desk will miss your gaze
The supplement that doesn’t let the “minor changes” feedback affect your day.
I feel like these give me room for great complementary visuals, they are playful, and you can see the thought process behind them. Which I love.
Note that I’m writing these with a specific person in mind, as always. My choice for today is the creative who’s working in an agency.
The next method…
Go weirdly specific
Vague is forgettable. But say something oddly specific, and your audience will feel seen.
Like..
“Zencore kicks in right around the time you’d normally doomscroll LinkedIn”; or “That 11:42 AM burst of clarity? Make it last 5 more hours – breaks not counted.”
Specificity means relatability.
Instead of saying “calm and focus,” say “no more Googling ‘how to focus’ every morning.”
This leads me to another method and tool, to be discussed in another upcoming article, which is the mindmap brainstorming method and Seenapse.
In short, Seenapse is an AI tool I recently discovered through a course, which allows you to make connections between words by giving you suggestions. It’s like a creativity game worth playing. It also gives you multiple ideas at the same time, but it boasts with the surprising factor from the get-go, at the detriment of ChatGPT’s rather in-your-face ideas.
I can’t wait to tell you about it.
Use the before & after grid
The last trick is to paint the contrast. Visuals with a split screen have been proven to work phenomenally.
You can make two columns: before and after.
In the column before you could write all the wrong things that happen when your attention is split and fogged, and in the column after, all the amazing things Zencore can do for you.
Make it as long as you can, so that you’ll have material to come to, when you’ll get to creating the script for your content.
Example:
Before: groggy, anxious, multitasking mess, TikTok open, Instagram open, WhatsApp open, Email half finished, 3 unfinished email drafts
After: calm, in flow, working in a clean room with no distraction, one tab open — and it’s just your doc.
Remember, you’re not selling Zencore. You’re selling 5 solid hours of actual deep work. A dream for a creative.
This method gives you a clear direction for the visuals you should aim for, but even so, I try not to pick the more obvious direction – a lot of tabs open, someone looking tired, and in the right side, a fella at his desk looking happy.
Searching for the tension in a photo – the conflict is what drives me.
After thoughts
If you’ve read all this, thank you. Your presence here means the world to me.
I also have a Youtube channel where I present pretty much the same things I write about in here. If you pass by, subscribing helps me a lot.
Hope it was useful, and pretty pretty please leave a comment with the method you want to try next.
D
