My last post made the point that we have to write about the reader and his/her view of the world, not about ourselves. So how do we do that?

It is a fact that we always assume that when something good happens it will be a lot better than it actually is. And when we contemplate something bad happening will always assume that it will be a lot worse than it actually is.

What this means is that we don’t have to over play benefits when selling to intelligent people - they’ll do that for us. An understated promotion which shows benefits but doesn’t scream them out can work particularly well, because the recipient of the advert will do most of the hard work - they will up the level of satisfaction in their own mind. They’re ready to imagine the earth - all we have to do is help them do it.

Likewise when selling salvation from disaster, (such as when selling insurance for the possibility of your water pipes outside your house splitting wide open) we can be sure that they will over-imagine the disaster - so we can be controlled. Their imagination is a much more powerful tool than our words, because we are limited in terms of what we are allowed to say.

Thus we talk about the reader’s world, but we don’t need to shout and scream about how wonderful our product is. We just let their thoughts take over.

Source of research: Daniel Gilbert, Harvard University, writing in Psychological Science Vol 17, page 649