'Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak'
This blog post is meant for discussion. It's about advertising, which is an important part of our campaigns. There are some fine lines I need to have gone over and have tried to search on these things today. I have found very little about what I'm looking for.
This has to do with selling by using peoples' emotion. There are a number of things I know about and some apparent discrepancies. A little help from top online marketing performers on here absolutely welcome!
Using Buyers' Emotions to Sell the Goods
Top advertising experts insist that we should appeal to people's emotion when setting up our sales campaigns. I've read quite a bit of stuff on this today, appealing to what people feel about the car they're interested in, the dress she wants for her wedding, and so forth.
Many adverts enlist things like the following. Take this one-liner in a small advert from "Just for Men," which produces hair-coloring products. They have a great example of an advert that incites emotion...
The small print at the bottom reads, "The results of a 30-year scientific study of lions in the Serengeti National Park of Tanzania show that lionesses are more attracted to darker maned beasts."
This is found to be factual, and has been observed at this location, but humans are not lions and if there is any such study with humans in this regard, the producers of this advert doesn't make this known to us, or such studies do not exist.
There is no doubt that this advert 100 per-cent appeals to the emotion. How much of a good thing is this? Looking at WA's advertising, how much of it appeals to emotion? Does it at all?
Note that the above advert, like most, and absolutely holds true 100 per-cent in rogue online products I've reviewed. In many cases, I've reviewed the advertising itself to show the insidious nature of it and the product itself. You rarely are told what a product is and what it does anymore. Some people call this "providing the benefits and not the more logical features of a product." Shouldn't there be a balance here?
Fallacy of Appeal to Emotion
To me, stuff like this is so seductive. It clouds reasoning on the basis of fear, pity, urgency, you name it. The above tells you nothing about what the product is or what it does. All it gives you is an apparent observation about lions, in highly effective manipulation of facts to get people, through emotion, to associate this product with a premise that men with light hair, who use this potion to darken it, get the women.
I see this kind of seduction so bad in many sales videos online that it is utterly harrowing. I've brought this up many times but I can see there is an extreme unfavourable reaction to it.
I realize that the most influential advertisers, speakers, orators, and other top promoters use this logical fallacy.
However, this also takes in, not the selling of a product being promoted, but dreams associated with it, the mansions, expensive cars, women, exotic beaches, yadda-yadda.
I also can see that there is, if there is any at all, an extremely low amount of such tactics used in Wealthy Affiliate advertising. Who is to say that NOT using such fallacies means less profit? Wealthy Affiliate has done just fine without it.
What I HAVE found is that a fallacy of emotion occurs when such an appeal replaces the rational argument altogether. This is key. If one is to present the rational argument, then it only follows that there will be needed the appeal to emotion to help support it. To leave the rational part of it out constitutes seduction and no substance. To have JUST the rational and not emotion produces a cold, monotonous argument.
My Observations
Today, I'm having a hard time finding those pre-launched JV invites that were once abundant. It seems that the recent rash of negative reviews on these pre-launches have spurred these unscrupulous marketers to take action by making their JV invitations unavailable until the last minute, or they have made these available only to known affiliates and not to the general public as they once were.
It has been these kind of reviews that have brought all of the online income I've had so far.
I've noted that this affects online marketing products with such things as SEO, affiliate marketing, social media marketing, and related campaigns. I've noted that things like Binary has not been affected in this way.
A definite observation to this is that I have noted the same kind of insidious techniques in advertising of scammy products are consistently throughout every such product I've reviewed.
There must be landmark training programs for the development of this type of campaign and this is what I'm looking for, so I can tear this apart and being at the source, be able to create evergreen content on this. The way in which these adverts are set up, especially video, seems to indicate it is coming from a common source.
It may not be wrong to appeal to human emotion in advertising but there certainly are ethical and unethical ways to go about it. It's this unethical agenda I'm after to infiltrate. If launch-jacking as I had it last year is no longer accessible, I have to find another way to get at it. Untold thousands of people every year, get scammed and taken in by such campaigns.
Any ideas, discussion, input on this most appreciated!
Recent Comments
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I wish I could be as articulate as you. Wow!
I want to know what you mean by "scammed".
I am an investor and compare what you said to the stock market. The stock market serves investors with prices for people to buy ownership in a company. Day traders, hedge fund managers, investors’ sentiment, the media and other psychological elements influence that price. The company’s fundamentals DO NOT (in most cases) reflect the stock price. This is why people lose money in the stock market. They are influenced by psychological thoughts (mostly generated by the media) about the stock of the company rather than the actual fundamentals of the company.
A rational investor looks at the fundamentals of the company (cash flow statement, balance sheet, income statement, management decisions, etc.). A rational investor NEVER should be influenced by emotion. Since the stock market serves investors prices that in most cases do not reflect the actual value of the company, rational investors are able to take advantage and make money. Rational investors make money from the market being wrong (for example Warren Buffett). The market is there to serve you, not to inform you. IT IS THE SAME WITH ADVERTISING!
Many times, day traders or hedge fund managers influence the price of a stock because they are buying and selling the stock short-term. Again, keep in mind stock is ownership of a company. Would a rational person who owns McDonald’s constantly buy and sell the company? In my opinion, I don’t think a rational person would buy and sell a great business. They would hold on to it.
However, day traders, who do not have the same thought process as me, are able to make money with derivatives and playing with ownership of a company (again stock represents ownership of a company). They play with ownership of a company, which in a lot of cases affect my investments. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF GOING AFTER THEM BECAUSE MOST OF THEM LOSE MONEY IN THE LONG RUN! I think the same of the people who make manipulative advertisements. They will eventually get caught, ruin their reputation, etc. They may make money (like day traders), but they will NEVER make as much money as the honest rational advertisers’.
There is no day trader (a person who manipulates stock prices) that is wealthier than Warren Buffett (rational investor). Also, Warren Buffett (the rational investor) has a better reputation than ANY day trader (stock price manipulator).
My main message is you shouldn’t give a rats butt about people who “scam”. They are not going to build the reputation, nor the long-term wealth compared to honest rational people (like yourself). Don’t waste your time on them.
^I am sure I made plenty of grammatical mistakes. You are absolutely a way better writer than me.
Your language is well-formed. I found it to be highly informative and a great analogy, the day trader to the scam artist. People almost always purchase with their emotions, not their rationale. It is very true that one should not invest with their emotion, feeling this or that is what they should trade in, and I like the advice about consulting the financial conditions of the company whose stocks you are purchasing.
Unfortunately this strategy doesn't apply to prospective buyers who are not familiar with the devious advertising they are looking at. It is astonishing the number of people who fall for these things, and it's not that I care about the people who scam...it's the people who GET scammed.
A scam, to me, is the deliberate seduction and deception used in advertising campaigns using both established and unique methods that is known to work with human psychology in delivering far less than is purported in the advertising. Paul mentions some of these above.
There was a time when far less emotion went into purchasing and people cared much more for quality of something, what it was and what it did, than what it "purportedly" did for them. Selling the dream-kind of advertising began to occur widespread in the late 1930s and early 1940s to more resemble what it is today. Rational advertising still exists, but it's not anywhere near as prevalent. Today's consumer is well-conditioned to buy with emotion. This was not always so, though to some degree, this too, has always been with us.
To me, advertising is the making and implementing of messages used to inform AND serve. It serves the promotion and informs the recipients. No, (if very few) advertising campaigns are perfect. However they can be done with good intent or ill will, like anything else. I wouldn't say advertising done by Wealthy Affiliate is perfect, but it certainly is put forth with integrity and of honest intention.
It is my intention to get as much information about advertising, what's good, what's bad, and in between. This is part of my campaign - to educate people about this topic so they can spot snares before they fall into them because the video adverts I've been through are filled with all sorts of fallacy, not just emotions in general, but certain ad hominems as well.
Commercial television advertising is incredibly notorious for engineering the right advertising at the right times before hypnotized viewers. It's another whole ball of wax and one reason why I stay away from television, especially networks like NBC, ABC and CBS, and others. LOL! I'm so out of touch with television that I don't know the networks like most people do! I only went as far as Brady Bunch, Room 222 and the Odd Couple!
Interesting comments you've made, and actually, I think you write just as well as I am said to write. I find your analogy above quite eloquently done! I've learned some things about investing from it (or reminded of them!) I have picked up basic information about investing from Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump, though the best source would be of course, Warren Buffet. Most people do not even know what the three financial documents you've mentioned above are and a LOT of people fall into Binary traps set everywhere!.
Thank you for the clarity.
I admire that you want to protect people from getting scammed. It is a challenging task that will require a lot of work. Also you might encounter criticism, which is most likely from people who scam. If you are doing the right thing, that criticism shouldn’t bother you. Again, I really admire what you are doing!
On a side note, I also admire that you say away from the major television networks. You pretty much nailed it with your comment about them.
Let me know if there is anything I can do to help your cause!
Surprisingly, the ONLY negative comments I have gotten so far is from the reviews I've done on Empower Network (EN) where I did get a couple bad ones. One of them, however, used bad language, and to the author's surprise, I published it! I made some observations of his behavior and bad language in my response, and never heard from this one again. One or two others, I simply deleted. It was the third time that I made an example of.
As for all the others, the vast majority of responses I got were, "What do I need to do to get my money back?"
We are all creatures of habit. Appealing to our emotions is a good way to make sales. Our left brains goes dormant in those instances.
This what the experts say. I need to take a closer look at Wealthy Affiiate's sales page and see what emotional cues are in there. Are they backed up with logical argumentation? Have I picked up on critical thinking erroneously? For years, I had thought all this business of appealing to emotion was completely unethical and seductive, but just today, just about a half hour ago, found a resource that seems to explain what the fallacy is and that not all appeals to emotion are bad if they support rational arguments that accompanies them, but can commit fallacy if the rational argument doesn't exist. I would say that this is a major enlightenment in what I know about argumentation.
I guess if your intention is do deceive, emotional appeal is a tool in the wrong hands. Otherwise, it seems kosher,
Precisely so! It is said by folks like Robert Cialdini (if I spelt this right) who wrote the book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (to me, persuasion and influence are not quite the same thing.) and other leading experts tell us that appealing to emotion is critical. However this has definitely been abused, and unfortunately has led to sordid episodes such as the holocaust and today, manipulation of all sorts, including scam on the Internet and offline. I have, many times mentioned emotional appeal but failed to indicate most times that there is a wrong way and a right way, and almost forgot that there is legitimacy in it.
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Of the other sites I visited I seen one trend, if you disagreed with something said by the guru you were cut off and cast out.
I enjoy the freedom of expression here.
I may not agree but I do know it is heartfelt from the writer and not some two faced greedy jerk spouting just to stay in the good grace of someone I am over paying to be there.
Just saying.
Have a great day