Potent: The Science Of Creating Connections With Copywriting

It's no secret that brands want you to spend money on their products. Let's be honest, they'd rather you tell them to shut up and take your money already.

Thankfully, that's not how it works 99% of the time.

That leaves brands with no choice, but to talk. They have to talk to you so you're aware of what they're selling and how it'll benefit you.

Enter advertising, a mega-machine guided by science and research wrapped in the artful pairing of design and copywriting.

If you read the title, we'll be focusing on copywriting, the vehicle in which brands talk to you.

Copywriting as a Potent Science and Art

Brands use copywriting to create a personality around their mission, value proposition and the suite of goods and services you may buy.

When done right, the voices brands craft are precise. Backed by a wealth of quantitative and qualitative analysis, these voices convert numbers into a string of words designed to sell product.

When done well, the voices brands craft are potent.

Potent can be defined as "having great power, influence or effect."

When copywriting is potent, it elicits a feeling or reaction that's, still, designed to sell product. Though, it won't necessarily seem like it. It'll read or sound like a passionate speech, a witty comedy sketch, or even a powerful short film. You'll walk away with an emotional connection to the brand that'll leave an impression on you beyond a one-off transaction.

Potent copywriting is the art layered on the science. It's created with a target in mind with the intention to wistfully sway that target into liking the brand, developing a relationship with it, and then solidifying the connection with a purchase. Then, you'll seek out the brand's social accounts and content, and continue to evolve that relationship.

And, you'll do all of this because you want to. Because an urge makes you feel like you have to. Because you're, well, hooked on a feeling.

The Psychology Behind Why You Latch On

We'll start here: Every piece of branded content or consumer marketing targets pleasure or pain.

When targeting your pleasure, advertising is designed to optimize that addictive dopamine rush from a momentary spark of joy. That may come in the form of desire, power, education or opportunity. Essentially, feel more of what you want to feel.

When targeting your pain, advertising is designed to offer you relief. That may come in form of a remedy from physical pain, a solution to mental frustrations, or to fill some kind of void. Essentially, more so you don't feel like less.

That sounds devious, manipulative even. The truth of the matter is we gravitate to what's better: a better job, a better home, a better lifestyle, a better you, a better me.

'Better' gives us pleasure. 'Better' soothes our pain. 'Better' is better.

And brands believe they can help you be better. To help you realize this, a potent brand voice that relates to your pleasure and pain is where it all begins.

When Potent Is The Art and Science Behind Why You Buy

Over the past decade or so, direct-to-consumer brands have bloomed to great heights across myriad industries (for the purposes of this article, we'll ignore their tortured relationship with Wall Street).

The value proposition these brands have offered is undeniable: high quality products at delightful prices and a customer experience that affords you the convenience to never take off your sweatpants.

It's like Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet to appease our collective laziness (that's a 'w' in the pleasure column).

All jokes aside, there's a reason why this business model has been replicated exponentially. Consumers love it. And these brands obviously know it.

Once they've came to this conclusion, they have to market the product they're selling, but to do so, they have to create a connection with you.

That is, a potent connection.

Before creating potency, these brands have created precision. They've studied you. They know you. And they anticipate you.

They've created a deeply defined, well-nuanced target demographic. Once they've locked in the bullseye, it's time execute on the form and flare of the repeated execution.

Spend some time with marketing assets from a few direct-to-consumer brands, and you'll notice a certain familiarity in their voices.

Time and time again, it falls somewhere between:

Pithy. Witty. Conversational. Relatable. Aspirational. Confident. Sharp. Value-driven.

Most of the time, it's some combination of these. All of the time, these cleverly crafted voices are targeted towards your pleasure and/or pain.

It's precision wrapped in potency. You feel like the brand knows you. You feel like it offers you meaning beyond the product.

And the tonality is no different than how your friends talk, or how that powerful TED talk resonated with you.

How Modern Brands Execute A Potent Voice

Direct-to-consumer brands have to double down on these tactics to build their own awareness and educate you on what they offer, all of this while asking you to circumvent the traditional routes that you're comfortable with.

While every brand deploys this approach, this new breed of brands has become an interesting case study because of their core goal: get you to debunk decades of relationship building in favor of something brand new.

AKA skip out on your friends for a total stranger.

Yikes. That means these brands depend on starkly grabbing your attention right out of the gates. They have to be, you guessed it, potent.

Let's take a look at a few select examples.

"Yeah, a dollar. Are the blades any good? No. Our Blades Are F*cking Great" - Dollar Shave Club

"Skin first. Our skincare essentials are designed to make you look and feel your glowy, dewy best before you think about makeup. Makeup second. Products that give you options but never cover you up, turn you into someone else, or over-complicate your routine. Because beauty should make you feel." - Glossier

"Onnit is Total Human Optimization. We're athletes, biohackers, professionals, retirees, parents, games, fighters, tradespeople, and forever students. We're all human, trying to get a little better at what we love every day. The human body is our instrument that we play to achieve greatness, and optimizing it for peak performance requires the proper nutrition, fitness, and supplementation. Onnit provides these foundations to support your human journey." - Onnit

In each of these examples, there are a few commonalities to glean after reading each:

Their precision:

• With each, you know exactly what they're selling and what they stand for without deeper research. This is what experts call a brand.
• It's safe to assume all of them are targeting a younger audience.
• They're selling you on 'better.'
• Their tone of voice elicits an intended feeling that's designed to create a connection with you and tap into a specific urge.

How they build on precision with potency:

Dollar Shave Club

• They introduce their brand by flat out explaining what they sell with sharp, provocative and humorous language. They juxtapose a shockingly low price point with a shockingly forward confidence in the quality.
• Lower price points are typically geared to younger audiences due to lower discretionary income. Also, younger audiences tend to latch onto snark, which Dollar Shave Club doubles down with an emphasized f-bomb.
• DSC is saying their product is better because the price is so much better, and their value only gets better because the quality is so f*cking great (whoops). They're targeting the pain of feeling like the only option is to buy overpriced, lackluster blades.
• If you watch the whole ad, the (intentional) outlandish absurdity of their CEO and founder cursing and wrecking grocery store aisles is.... fun? Yes, fun! Shaving and razor blades were never fun at all, and Dollar Shave Club harnessed humor and shock value to elicit joy around an otherwise boring product.

Glossier:

• Glossier is selling beauty and skincare products that amplify your natural looks. It's "be more of who you already are", rather than "change who you already are."
• Like Dollar Shave Club, Glossier leans on wit to attract a younger audience that's tired of the old vanguard. Their email primer is the best example of this: "We do this thing where we send email updates on stuff you'll probably to know about..." It's cool, casual, and intentionally not the L'Oreal's and Estee Lauder's of the world.
• Glossier's version of 'better' is more natural. On a day-to-day basis, skincare and makeup products should still leave you looking like you. Glossier wants their consumers to know these suite of products will enhance your natural beauty with subtle flourishes that balance the realness of you and the science behind the products.
• Typically, luxury and beauty products wield desire with aspirational, sometimes ethereal language (just like this sentence). Glossier humanizes that complex with conversational language like "your glowy, dewey best". They brand themselves as a beauty product, but connect with the consumer that's looking for a more authentic brand, which Quartzy dubs as "aspirational realness."

Onnit:

• Onnit goes out of their way to let you know what "Total Human Optimization" means, but with a tight, manifesto-like approach. In four sentences, you know this brand is built on a foundation of various health and fitness products to help any human elevate (aka optimize) their physical and mental performance.
• Onnit does open up the conversation to older audiences like "professionals, retirees, parents..." Yet, from a pure language standpoint, there's a cool factor with a phrase like "Total Human Optimization" that a twenty-something like myself would be intrigued by. When you read on, there's a casual simplicity -- which is refreshing for an industry that leans on alpha attitudes and complex ingredients -- that allows a younger audience to easily dip their toes into supplements and fitness equipment.
• Onnit's version of 'better' is as clear as it gets: a holistically better you. 'Total' = holistic. 'Human' = you. 'Optimization' = better. Then, when you look at how the words are paired with imagery and design, you see their young (see above bullet point) sponsored athletes in action or clean product photography of the purest form of their natural ingredients.
• Many nutritional and fitness brands are alienating by design. Their products are likely for serious athletes, CrossFitters, bodybuilders and strict dieters. Onnit is trying to transcend that with clear, relatable, and still aspirational language.

Potency Is Storytelling

With any brand, not just the three above, their brand is designed to tell a story. It's a story guided by a certain purpose.

It's storytelling backed by a well-honed craft and years of A/B testing to ensure it garners an ROI. For brands, the stories they tell may not immediately end with a happy ending, but their intention is for everyone to leave with a smile on their face.

And their hope is that the happy ending is with you ultimately feeling better.