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The Unexpected Power of Emotion

Now… if you know even the slightest about copywriting, you already know that EMOTION sells.

Not the features, not the trinkets or the widgets…

It’s the meaning and the emotion behind it that makes people whip out their wallets faster than you can say ‘doppio ristretto, hold the sugar’ (which is my vernacular, but that’s neither here nor there 😉 ).

Turns out, this is true in some unexpected ways.

Well, the art world never ceases to amaze me but this is pretty out there.

Tracey Emin’s art installation of her unmade bed recently fetched a nifty $4.5 million dollars from its eventual buyer:

Let’s see if we can make some sense about this now.

So this is a normal, unmade bed. No golden sheets or anything.

Just a regular unmade bed that’s apparently been untouched for 16 years, when the artist had a bad breakup and spent 4 agonizing days wallowing in it.

Now, why would ANYONE want that for themselves? Surely they could just go to Ikea and fetch a similar, CLEAN bedding set for a tiny tiny sum in comparison.

Of course. But you have to understand the BUYER’S MIND (which is what we copywriters do).

The buyer was willing to shell out that sum because, not only could they afford it which I’m sure they did, but because they APPRECIATED it.

They appreciated the effort, the coming to terms with a real experience, a real emotion… frozen in time.

And they wanted to show their appreciation by buying this very piece of art.

Go figure, you may say. But that’s what you need to start getting interested in if you want to learn how to sell anything… the BUYER’S MIND.

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Comments to: The Unexpected Power of Emotion
  • July 31, 2014

    That is so crazy, but true. Emotion can make people do some pretty wild things. Great marketing strategy.

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