Page 133 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

60 ASK YOUR READER A
QUESTION

What did you have for lunch yesterday? You just stopped reading
and thought, didn’t you? Questions do this. It’s what they’re for.
In conversation, they’re how we elicit information from the person
we’re talking to. In the simulated conversations we create in our
copy, they’re a means of engaging a reader who, initially, may be
indifferent, bored, or downright hostile.

As we can’t hear their answer, it’s pretty one-sided, but it does stop
them, momentarily, from deleting or binning our copy. And in
that instant, we have the chance to capture their attention. For that
reason, I use them a lot. In everything from press releases to sales
letters. Especially in sales letters.

The idea

From the Landscape Design Trust, a charity concerned with
public space
To promote their magazine, Green Places, the Landscape Design
Trust wanted to revamp their existing leaflet and asked me to inject
a more engaging tone of voice. The first thing I did was to turn the
opening around from one that lectured the reader to one that asked
them to engage with it and, by extension, its subject matter. Here
are the opening three paragraphs . . .

Are you engaged in public space? Do you want to keep abreast
of new developments in the this fast-changing sector? Are
you interested in what your colleagues in other disciplines—
from landscape architects to green space managers—are
thinking, and doing?

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