Sat 15
Apr 2006
A Day to Forget…
Posted under Marketing Message
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What is your first feeling when you see a picture similar to the one above with the following headline:
Give Them A Day to Forget…
Something inside your head sure doesn’t click, right?
Well, that is how it was for me when I recently came past huge bilboards along the side of the road. Each billboard featured an image of a child with some obvious disability. And in huge letters the poster read "Give Them A Day to Forget…"
- A sick joke?
- A mistake at the printer’s?
- Or could it be that the word Not was left out on purpose…
After my 5th exposure to this message, I made a note of the web address and decided to look it up. On the home page I was greeted by a most interesting message…
This organisation - called ‘De Opkikker’ - had been relatively unknown to the majority of the Dutch population. But it recently changed dramatically. From a previous 5% there had been a sudden increase to 17% of the Dutch who knew the name and what the organisation does. All thanks to this intruiging headline…
(De Opkikker organizes a nice day out for children with a handicap or who have been chronically ill so they’ll have a day … to forget.)
Our brains don’t deal very well with information which is either incomplete or perceived as wrong. It will instantly want to either fill in the gaps or make the necessary corrections.
When you are aware of this as a marketer, you can use this knowledge to concoct a headline which gives people’s brain such dissatisfaction that they’ll be itching to find out more. The desire becomes so strong, that your message will be all they can think of…
Mark Joyner calls this the Zeigarnik Effect.
Add a touch of Zeigarnik to your next sales message and watch how it will increase your success…
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