Page 135 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

61 YOU FLATTER ME!

Benjamin Disraeli, nineteenth-century British novelist and
Prime Minister, once observed that, “Everyone likes flattery; and
when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.”
He might have made a good copywriter. Although we profess to
despise flattery, and the flatterer (in Timon of Athens, Shakespeare
has Apemantus rebuke a fawning poet with the lines, “He that
loves flattery is worthy o’ th’ flatterer”), we are nonetheless pleased
whenever we receive any.

This technique is useful for lowering your prospect’s resistance to
your message. Suggesting that they must be unusually perspicacious,
handsome, wealthy, or otherwise endowed is unlikely to meet with
disagreement. In that moment, you have the chance to press on.

The idea

From The Field, a country sports magazine
What fun, writing a mailshot to sell subscriptions to The Field.
Guns, dogs, horses, countryside: I don’t shoot, myself, but as a
target reader, the typical Field subscriber made for an interesting
study. The magazine itself is a glossy monthly packed with the usual
fare—buying guides, practical advice, opinion pieces, features,
reviews—but its readership is drawn from a much narrower
demographic than you’d usually get. Very affluent, very upmarket,
very conservative (in its outlook and politics). But also fun-loving,
irreverent, and self-confident.

A line I used to flatter the reader reads as follows:

126 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS