Today in Digital Marketing - Has Science Finally Cracked the Copywriting Code?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Friday, April 28th. Today, unraveling the syntax sales secret, consumers rebel against greedflation, Pinterest partners with Amazon, Snapchat faces its first revenue decline, and Gen Z's latest obsession, sludge content. We'll explain. I'm Steph Gunn, sitting in for Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. As marketers, coming up with just the right ad copy, the perfect turn of phrase, the clever but understated sales pitch, that's the art in what we do, right?

Starting point is 00:00:37 But what if we could reproduce it, measure it with a metric, turn that art into science? Consider an ad for recruitment, two versions. Apply today to join a great team and join a great team. Apply today. They're almost the same, right? But the structure of that offer, known as the syntax, is different. Can you tell which one would get more job applications? Celine Adelaiken. She is a professor of marketing at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Frankfurt.

Starting point is 00:01:07 She recently co-authored a research paper called Creating Effective Marketing Messages Through Moderately Surprising Syntax. Todd spoke with her earlier this week. There is so much competition now for consumers' attention and consumers taking action, be it in the form of clicking on a headline, clicking on an ad, opening an email and reading it. So we started thinking about what are the drivers of getting people to do what you want them to do in a message, right? So how can you design effective communication so that people do what you want them to do? And ultimately, what we realized is that a lot of attention so far has been paid into the style of the message. How is it communicated? What are the words that you choose? How do you make the story interesting?

Starting point is 00:01:52 What's the story that you tell? Right. So we think a lot about the content, but we realize that we don't pay that much attention to how we then formulate the words. Of course, there is some research in syntax and its complexity, but we thought there seems to be more to it that we cannot pick up. And we wanted to study an aspect of language that, you know, lay individuals can't just look at it and figure out. The example you picked is great. And to be honest, off the top of my head, I don't even know which one was performing better. You can't just look at it and figure it out. You need our metric. Your findings came down to something called syntactic surprise. What does that mean? Let me explain with an example. So the way we process language is word

Starting point is 00:02:36 by word. So as words come to us, we start building it up. Each word we encounter, in our minds, we set an expectation as to what is going to come next. So for example, if I start with I, then you would probably expect that I'm going to say I am. And if I say I am, you expect that I'm going to say I'm Celine. So this is how we process. So for example, if I say Amazon, and I say Amazon delivers, then you start expecting that I'm going to say some object. And this is the most common expectation that you would have. This is what people learn. Now, surprises when whatever you say is not compliant with the expectation. So if I continue Amazon delivers with Amazon delivers fast, that's not

Starting point is 00:03:26 what you expected. Now, the caveat there is that it's not wrong. It is still correct to say Amazon delivers fast, Amazon delivers reliably, but it's unexpected. It's surprising. And that does something to the brain. And this is where we come with the moderately that you were picking on earlier. That if it is just as I expected, what value does that communication have for me? Why do I have to keep reading it, keep listening to it? But if it's unexpected, I'm intrigued. I keep paying attention. But if it's too unexpected, I don't know what to do with it. I check out. So it's kind of like finding that happy, moderate place. It doesn't sound easy. That's why we had to develop a metric to help people out.

Starting point is 00:04:11 In their full conversation, Todd and Celine talk about the details of that metric, the online calculator she built to help copywriters identify their own level of syntactic surprise. That's a calculator you can use for free, by the way. Plus her thoughts on how this works for offline media and how AI generated copy could change the marketing industry. Their full conversation is coming exclusively to the premium feed tomorrow. You can sign up now by going to todayindigital.com slash premium or tapping the link in the show notes. Are you taking a little extra profit while you can? Your customers think you are. Four out of five consumers now think brands are involved in greedflation, defined as using inflation as an excuse to hike prices. A recent survey found 90% of consumers said they're

Starting point is 00:05:01 willing to ditch their preferred brands due to price pressures. 60% said more needs to be done to protect consumers from brands that use this tactic. Shoppers have the least loyalty toward grocery brands. As food and beverage brands recited as the type of products consumers are most likely to switch to save money, followed by clothing and shoes, while tobacco and alcohol ranked lower. This study also found that public controversies directly affect brand loyalty, and more than a half of consumers want businesses to be honest and clearly outline their plans to resolve problems. Most said that a public apology would make them happy, but there are other things that matter to customers, including

Starting point is 00:05:41 removing an employee responsible for a mess-up, offering a discount or refund, and providing a complaint service. Speed of response is also important to some customers, with more than a third willing to wait for a brand to issue a statement before deciding on a response, and a quarter would boycott or stop buying a brand's products and services immediately due to a controversy. Data has been provided by a test survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers. Pinterest announced a new ad partnership with the biggest e-commerce company in the world yesterday, which will let Amazon advertisers expand their campaigns to the social platform.

Starting point is 00:06:22 When users click on an Amazon ad on Pinterest, they will be directed to the e-commerce site to complete their purchase. This is a smoother buying experience for consumers as most Amazon shoppers already have their payment information on file with the company, meaning faster checkouts. It is not yet clear where the ads will appear to end users on Pinterest, but the company says the integration of Amazon ads will take place over multiple quarters starting later this year. business, or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen.

Starting point is 00:07:16 Snap's quarterly results are in. The company reported yesterday that its revenue had fallen for the first time since going public. In the first quarter, revenue was just shy of a billion dollars, but that's down 7% from the same period in the prior year, falling short of Wall Street's expectations. The company says demand for its ads was disrupted by upgrades it made to its ad selling platform. The company recorded a net loss of $330 million. As a result, Snap's stock plummeted by over 20% during yesterday's after-hours trading. Despite its woes, daily users keep climbing. The number of Snapchat's daily users grew to over 380 million, a 15% increase over last year. Meta survives to win another legal fight.

Starting point is 00:08:07 Dozens of American states were trying to revive an antitrust case against Meta, which accused the company of monopolizing the marketplace by acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram. Well, those revival attempts have been denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals in a 3-0 ruling yesterday. The judge said that the state attorneys general waited too long to challenge the transactions and referred to the lawsuit as not only odd, but old, given the rapid growth and innovation in the social networking market. This decision is the latest setback for government efforts to pursue big tech companies on antitrust grounds. However, the Federal Trade Commission still has a pending case against Meta

Starting point is 00:08:47 with similar allegations. The core allegation in both cases is that Facebook unlawfully suppressed competition by buying up potential rivals, and the FTC is seeking to unwind those deals. A Meta spokesperson praised the ruling and said that the company would fight the pending litigation by the FTC. And finally, LinkedIn is introducing a new feature for its premium subscribers that lets them add a call-to-action button on their profile that directs visitors to a specific URL. The custom button option will be available in the profile settings of paying subscribers and offers six preset CTA options, including visit my store, request a consultation, sign up for a demo, and more. We have a family reunion to go to on my husband's side of the family this weekend,

Starting point is 00:09:46 and I am currently in potluck limbo. So I was just going to do what I usually do and bring some type of store-bought pie, but I'm on the email chain of what everyone is bringing, and people are really outdoing themselves this year. One person is bringing a full turkey with gravy, so I might actually have to step up my game and go to a local bakery so I can maybe pull off my store-bought pies as being homemade. And this weekend is a great time to check out our new podcast. If you haven't done so already, it's called Behind the Ad with Todd Mappin, and you should be able to find it wherever you get your podcasts, or you can go to behindthead.page. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the SnuNamuk First Nation on Vancouver Island.

Starting point is 00:10:36 Our associate producer is me, Steph Gunn. Production coordinator, Sarah Gilt. Features producer, Sarah Brooke Christian. Music Licensing by Source Audio. And Ad Coordination by Red Circle. And not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is himself actually one of the world's leading marketing scientists. But even he was impressed by Dr. Adlai's thoughts on today's show about moderately surprising syntax and copywriting. He told us in our story meeting

Starting point is 00:11:05 today, the spheres are in commotion, the elements in harmony. She blinded me with science. Thanks for listening. I'm Steph Gunn. Todd will be back on Monday. Thank you.

Today in Digital Marketing - Has Science Finally Cracked the Copywriting Code?

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