Back in college, one of my favorite classes was "life drawing.
" This was almost like every red-blooded 18-year old guy's fantasy.
Why? Because twice a week we'd spend 2-3 hours in a dark room drawing a nude model (always an attractive female -- thanks teacher).
And while the whole snickering-over-the-naked-lady thing got old for us after the first class, I ended up learning an extremely valuable sales letter headline lesson from one of the models.
Here's what happened: They were doing construction on the building at the time, and the joint was crawling with construction workers walking around, making noise and doing their thing.
But one day, there was no noise.
No hammering, or sawing or pounding -- just dead silence.
It was very strange, and we all wondered what happened...
until the model suddenly screamed and we got our answer: The teacher forgot to pull the blinds to the room! And apparently some of the guys stopped by for a quick "peek.
" Nothing could have pulled them away, either.
They hung out even AFTER the blinds were drawn.
Creepy? Definitely.
But still kind of useful, in a way.
Because it later made a great headline "reference point".
What can I WRITE to have that kind of effect in my ads? What can I SAY that gives people no choice but to keep reading my ads and not look away? How can I DRAW readers in as irresistibly to my message as those construction workers were to that window? Hey, laugh all you want.
But your headline is 80% of the battle.
And asking questions like this can make all the difference.