Psychology in Copy – Liv Steigrad

So Crisp Podcast

Liv Steigrad of Tender L Creative is a fellow copywriter who brings psychological insight to her wordsmithing.

I am a not-so-secret fan of hers, so I invited her onto So Crisp to get emotional about copywriting – in a good way!

Ever wished you had an alter-ego? Liv and I discuss the power of names, and then we get into the psychology of copy, client avatars, and taking risks. There’s a bit of queer marketing and baby-having in the mix as well!

The Crisp Takeaways

* Yum *

1. Writing for memory ties into both your words and how they’re organised on the page. The truth is, most of the time, people aren’t paying much attention. There are so many things constantly demanding our attention that our we just don’t retain that much information. But there are tricks you can use. One of my favourites is to try to write musically. Write with rhythm, with rhyme, with repetition. Alliteration – but only if you can make it seem incidental.

2. Next up, writing for emotion: You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘features tell, benefits sell’ before.

With the features and benefits, the reasons this works all link back to emotion. Firstly, describing the benefit/result/their experience prompts the reader to envisage it. Bam. They’re visualising themselves having it.  That’s an important step in selling. Now ideally, envisaging this thing will also inspire some emotion. Relief, happiness or pride…That’s what you’re going for. There is actually a particular level of emotional arousal which was found to be ideal for helping people retain information. Strong, but not too strong. So that way, even if they don’t buy the thing right then – it’ll stick around in their minds for longer.

3. And now for that three-word phrase – which you’ll notice I’ve left until last, so hopefully everybody listening remembers it. Ready?

Emotion trumps logic.

People buy things on emotion. The logic comes in afterwards when we justify it to ourselves. Every single word has some kind of emotional nuance attached to it. That’s why names are so important. That’s why business and product names are so important.
There’s the meaning of the word, and there’s the emotion attached. When you work with both, that’s when you get really powerful copy.