Page 149 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

68 SATISFY THEIR
CRAVINGS

When people need stuff, they will buy it. Just don’t expect it to be
a particularly motivated customer. Life insurance, new wellington
boots, a replacement wastepaper basket: they get bought but not
drooled over. Contrast that state of mind to the one when they want
something. Much better. If the want in question is some fundamental
human need—sleep for example—it would take an idiot not to be
able to connect with their prospects.

Much as people—marketing people especially, I have often
noticed—claim to find selling distasteful, without it there is no
buying. So being sold to is a good thing. And if you’re being sold
something you really want it’s a fantastic thing.

The idea

From a nighttime nanny service
If you have children of your own, this isn’t going to be a stretch, and
if you haven’t children, I still think you’ll get it very easily . . .

What would it be like to go without a full night’s sleep for a year? Or
two years? Or three? Not no sleep. Just sleep interrupted every hour
or two by a crying, no, make that a screaming, baby. Pick your own
noun. Mine would be purgatory. Hell is shorter and probably more
accurate. So how wonderful would it be if you received a mailing
from a company promising to make this peculiarly horrible pain
vanish, literally overnight.

That’s exactly what my client was offering. Highly trained and
qualified nannies who would sort your baby’s sleep problems out for

140 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS