The Surprising, Satisfying Way To Drive More Conversions transcript

lyanna patch is back and I love talking to lyanna she's one of the most creative funniest people in e-commerce she's on the show to get really tactical this time she's the founder of punchline copy and what she does is help Brands be funny this time on the show all we did is talk like tactical tips for how to actually do this stuff in your brand so today on the show expect to learn how to use humor to help people get through the anxiety of making a purchase and actually finish their purchase how to use humor to make it so that people don't skip transactional emails which are the most read emails that you send and what my favorite donnut is as presented by my four-year-old who interrupts me in the show hang in there stay tuned it's going to be a really good episode you're going to like this a lot let's talk to Lanna Hi lyanna how are you hi Andrew I'm great how are you you are lying you said that earlier I am lying how dare you I me all great like we're all we're great man you know you're like are you on drugs yes um I this is a good illustration of why you're back so fast I like I just I just think you're very funny I think you're very funny and fantastic I really enjoy talking to you and uh and so lyanna thanks for coming back and for being on this show again let's tell people what this is I probably already told them in the intro but uh maybe not probably um we um we talked very recently on this podcast and right at the end you said this little thing you said you said we need to do some tiny tactical tips and I was like yes let's do that because you and I talked about being funny uh in a brand and and I sort of framed it as being not boring in a brand in part too because I think there's some broader application than just being funny but uh and I think you think that too but the um but you are uniquely funny and then we talked sort of conceptually a lot about some of those things and got into little about things people should do about that like join an improv class or join your cohorts or get your material those kinds of things can all help you but that leaves this big question which is how do you actually do it which is what everybody actually wants to know like how do you actually do it and so you had your little idea of TT tiny tal tips um and so we could actually take people into really how you take this from con conceptual into specifics did I get that right is that what we're going to talk about right now that's absolutely correct and I think it's so funny that I did that on the first podcast that we recorded because this tends to be how I approach it I'm like hey can we talk about like the big conceptual side and the psychological stuff and the emotional stuff first and everyone's like no can you just please tell me what to write and it takes me weeks to get there in my brain um I well I'm glad you wanted to do that I I am a very much an idea person and sometimes actually struggle to get down to the details of things because like so much of the way that I try to approach a lot of problem solving is with this like let me just get my head around like the strategy and the belief first and what I'm actually trying to accomplish and only once for me personally when I when my feet feel firmly established on that then I'm like okay now I can actually go and figure out how to do it so you should this the point is you should go watch or listen to our last conversation if you're if you uh currently watching or listen to this one and then you should watch listen to this one I don't know what we talked about I know I did have to go back to remember like okay what are we going to do today we're going to do something tactical I remember that but uh yeah inexplicably I couldn't remember tiny tactical tips I don't know if we talked about deciding why you want to be funny or not boring for me it's obvious um but like just in case I didn't mention that last time it's important to figure out what is the point of using humor if you're going to use humor because there are so many strategic ways to deploy it uh and to build your brand voice and it all comes down to how do we want to make people feel right how do we want to be remembered do we want to build a relationship if we mess up can we use humor to you know sort of smooth that over uh and there's a lot of different ways to do it and so I think I probably said this last time because I've said this a million times but often when I talk to Brands about adding humor they're like it's an on or off switch right is that ringing a bell totally well I don't know if we said it like that but I'm I'm tracking what you're saying and I think it's a helpful reminder yeah they're like okay I'm either super corporate and formal or I'm Cards Against Humanity and it's like no there's a huge Spectrum in here right so you can just amp it up a little bit get a little friendlier warmer then you start to get absurd and weird um but most brands live in this very safe realm of sort of wholesome goofy non-harmful humor this is where like puns live dad jokes cute animals cute babies people falling down but not getting hurt that's uh that's like the safe Zone to play in and another safe zone is self-deprecation which is why you see lots of especially like younger gen Z skewing Brands uh doing self-deprecation because it's very funny to make fun of yourself and no one gets hurt except you right yeah anyway yeah do you do you think go ahead go ahead I was gonna say there's a bunch of stuff to consider uh what were you gonna ask well uh do you think more brands should push that line yes because it would make my work more fun s um I really love it when Brands come to me and then I work for them and then they're like we love it but can you harder it's very rare because usually I'm like I went hard pull me back it is a good reminder though that if you there's a uh I'll tell you I'll tell you a brand that I think of that is not funny but that um has I I think I've seen Embrace more of their identity in a way that would be off-putting to some people maybe perhaps even to you I don't know um but that brand is born primitive uh and born primitive is a military founded uh uh brand um and leans I think what you would say is broadly conservative on a lot of issues um so far as I can tell what's that what I would say is broadly concern yeah I I mean I actually I don't know but I uh sorry I don't mean what you would say specifically but what I think many people would say is broadly conservative got it yeah yeah and what I have watched happen is that for a little while as they were growing they backed off on some of those things and tried to be a more everyday like athletic apparel brand and then what they decided over time was no this is actually who we are we're going to press into this identity for for better for worse in terms of the identity itself but it clearly resonated more deeply and it clearly pissed some people off and I think like that is in some ways I mean you I think humor doesn't always work that way you don't always have to piss people off but like you you it sort of took a risk of of of frustrating people and actually reinforce their identity and their depth with others and I think there's a way to do that in a way that is uh really effective you're also describing a bell curve that I see in a lot of Brands especially in software where in order to stand out in the market when you launch you have a huge personality or you're just the founder and so you can do whatever you want because no one's paying attention as you grow you have more stakeholders and they sort of flatten you like they don't want maybe it's not a bell curve maybe it's the opposite of a bell curve I don't know what math is uh but it's a it's a trend where as you get bigger you have a lot of stakeholders that say it's not safe to be let's calm it down and then when you reach a certain market share brand is the only thing that matters anymore and you have to go hard again yeah yeah okay all right I want to go down this rad farther but let's resist the temptation uh so let's do tactical that's the really the point of this episode which is like let's talk about how to actually do these things no matter where you are going to be on that curve um so um okay Lanna here is my question for you to start things off how should Brands be funny tactically what do they do to actually do it besides take improv and take your classes which they should do they should take your glasses but they should uh go through their copy go through the customer journey and look for places where people are feeling anxious or potentially excited or if they read their copy out loud at any point in the funnel does it sound like something is missing because all of those are opportunities for a little bit of humor so that's the first step own Journey okay audit your own journey and then um and then you know is there like something people should be like so you said like reduce anxiety or something like that like how do I find reduce how do I find the places where going to be anxious or are there places where where everybody is always anxious and like these are the spots in the funnel that you should just go look out for that yes okay so you should you should know like how your customer is feeling throughout the journey you should do like an emotion mapping exercise um I actually smooshed that together with a physiological arousal exercise in my course which doesn't make any sense to anyone but me but it's like if people are really excited you know their skin prickles they start to sweat their heart starts pounding like you can turn that into excitement or anxiety so you have a choice right anyway none of this is are there places so are there places typically where that happens like is that at the ad level is that in the cart is that like at an email like where is that I would say it used to be at the ad level but now we see so many ads that it's probably more like a dull like oh this seems interesting and they click through or they laugh right um but it's usually right when you're asking them to buy or you're asking them to take some sort of meaningful conversion add to cart maybe um and you have the choice whether to get out of the way and like reduce that anxiety in a non funny way or you have the choice to turn off the pressure valve a little bit and make them laugh so it's like it's up to you CU sometimes the laugh can be distracting and you want them to stay anxious because you want them to take action and you don't want the laugh to be the action if that makes sense yeah totally yeah uh that's actually was my initial concern with doing it is that like if I'm just thinking about like at the moment of press the button yeah I it's like you know MailChimp always had a really good version of this back in the day where it was like it was like a like when you were going to hit s like the last step is like the monkey with the finger and like sweating yeah and it's like it's like it's like shaking nervously and stuff and it's it was like a really good indication like taking you towards the action of pressing s but it was like a little moment of humor to go like okay you know um that's such a good example yeah I love that because they're right there with you and all good copy meets the reader where they are right so all good humor should meet the reader in that moment nearly every one of my clients has installed their meta ads pixel data set with Billy and I am now sending more and more people outside of my client base to Billy and that's for a very simple reason I somebody asked me about this today why should I use Billy and I said well because I have tested Billy repeatedly over and over to make sure that my clients are getting the best data from their Shopify store into uh their meta ads account because uh meta of course is using all that data to power it machine learning to deliver your ads to the right people at the right time and so you want to give meta the best possible data from your store Billy is the best third party pixel of which I am aware and that's for a bunch of reasons one I have tested it and the event match quality from Billy's pixel has beaten everything else that I have tested against it including other thirdparty tools I've also tested it in head-to-head AB tests same campaign setup same ad set setup same ads Billy's uh the RASS and the Billy campaigns is better than the other ones pretty much every time I've tested it and I've replicated the test multiple times that's true if I'm comparing Billy to other third party tools or especially especially especially to the native uh meta Shopify installation you should go do it it's only $1 for your first month and it's incredibly easy to uh to get started it's like a couple clicks and you'll have your pixel installed it is really really that smooth go get Billy right now by going to b. a b. a it is Affordable it is the most affordable third partyy pixel tool that I'm aware for 100% server side tracking for your ads it's what I use you should use it too b. a H that's good and it also like re it like came straight from who that brand is like the the silliness of MailChimp like that idea is like a very silly brand you know still do it I think it's still there probably no I have no idea I mean since they broke up with Shopify all those years ago like I haven't used MailChimp in forever but the um yeah um okay so uh the okay can we go back the goal of making somebody laugh in that moment and that moment is to make them purchase but like what's the in between step there like how does laughing helping help make them purchase it reduces anxiety reduces anxiety it boosts information recall so if they wander away from your brand they're more likely to remember you if you made them laugh like for example the fact that I haven't used mail Shimp in all those years and I still remember the the gift exactly I bet you can't think of a moment like that from any other email service provider no right I definitely can't with active yeah they're just like H anymore like what with a fun animation um Gusto does this really well too though similar style um they send their regular transactional emails but each has a different GIF at the top and it's like hey you're getting paid right now and it's just a a cartoon of a person's feet and there's a little cat wandering around the feet and it's like oh you made this so cute in this totally Bal touch point which is a a big uh passion of mine like bringing humor into the moments where people don't expect it anyway we're we're getting philosophical again no it's no we're not because that's actually another really good tactical thing you could do like just go look for the boring interactions in your business go look at everything that you turned on by default in Shopify and clayo yeah that's interrup you no that no no that don't be sorry that's exactly right I mean it's interesting because people always used to say this about transactional emails in particular which is that like they have the highest open rate of anything you'll send anybody right so it's like yeah and you can't re it's like IL legal to use them to sell so it was always like how do you turn this into something uh I mean you can like use a little bit of them to sell but like essentially it's not even really what what they're for and all people think about you to sell but that's a really good idea it's just like how do I make this we talked last time about the CD baby um you know transactional email but just like T finding ways to take a thing that everybody is going to see an open and turn it into a little bit of magic like that's a pretty uh low amount of effort relatively speaking for a high for a high amount of impact just because everybody opens up yeah and they've never you've they've never been more excited than like right after they buy right so there's a space in between buying and getting the product where normally you get the default order confirmation email and you might get your order has shipped and it and I can't remember if we said this last time but it's like it's like the brand stops caring about you because all of this is already built out in Shopify so if you can make them feel special amp them up educate them about the product let them know you know how to get the most out of it um I wrote some post purchase emails for a coffee brand that were like you know here's how to brew your beans at the perfect temperature so you don't destroy the coffee oils and they were written uh you know really fun and funny and there was a gift of somebody walking away from a gas station blowing up like you don't want to do this to your coffee be use the right temperature water yeah um yeah that's such a huge opportunity that barely any brands are taking yeah okay all right so then how do we do it how do we do it um so you go look for the moment now how do I actually go make it funny tactical tiny tactical tip Lanna won go CH choose a path edit in the funny write it straight and edit in the funny or do some idation ideation whatever you want to call it uh exercises those are your two paths I think if you're starting from right now you can edit in the funny um and let me see so what do you mean you mean by that don't change the basic concept of what you're doing yeah right so so in the example you just gave it would be like um like the post-p purchase coffee email you you you you probably already have a post purchase email if you're that coffee brand and so one thing to do would just be like essentially the pepper in jokes that so you don't change the concept you're just like messing with the execution a little bit but then another way to do it right would be to like scrap the whole email start from scratch and say what if we reimagine this right right and then there's one there there's a there's a tactical tip tactic number one that is probably my all-time favorite which is a a fun and funky combination of the two which is add a frame or filter so like it's an order confirmation email but what if we made it ocean themed or Matrix themed or we decided to use a bunch of gifts from the cartoon Arthur like putting those creative limitations around the piece makes it so much easier to make a cohesive funny thing you know it's much easier to say like how do I how do I make a matrix joke then how do I make a joke yeah okay that makes sense so all you're saying is essentially like yeah this is like a classic creative thing which is that one of the ways that you do more creative things is that you you essentially limit the scope of your options right because if yeah okay so so in that case like if let's take your let's take the coffee brand I I don't know who you're talking about but just because it's an easy thing you're selling coffee on the internet so now you would you would think about okay um I'm going to send this coffee post purchase email and the theme of this email is going to be Birds okay great and so birds and does does it matter if Birds is related to coffee no it doesn't um it's obviously like if you're doing sort of a brainstorm exercise and you're coming up with things that are related to your brand great choose one of those cu the cognitive leap isn't so far um but you could you could use Birds I used birds in one of those emails already that's why it comes to mind it was like Hey a little bird told us you're out of coffee you know because you bought it a month ago you should get more and also why are you telling Birds your business yeah right why bird so it's that is another trick you can use if this is happening then what else what else is happening that's an improv thing so if a bird knows if a little birdie told me that you're out of coffee why what else does that bird know is there a Syndicate of birds passing information have Birds been government drones this whole time like you can take it as far as you want and that's how you build that little world so good I mean this feels like a reinforcement of your tick an improv class thing because what I feel like you just did is and this is going to be like the most basic improv thing and it's going to sound like I'm an improv poser for saying it cuz I am but it just sounds like you yes added yourself into the future right you're just like okay the moment that you say birds are in this world of this email you just start playing out the absurdity of the scenario and then you follow that as far as it'll go yeah exactly if this is true what else is true we also call this heightening um and You' you've seen this improv scenes where like something happens and something crazier happens and something really crazy happens and you can always tell when there's not enough distance between those things so you get to pick your Beats right um this is one way to come up with a frame filter ah you know you can also just do pop culture references um or like movies if there's a a show that you know your audience really likes use a gift from that show and you can work backwards from a gift that you like so maybe it's um I don't know share in Clueless like clapping I don't even know if that's a gift I'm just making her up yeah yeah but you could write the whole email as share that gives you a frame or a filter for your message then makes it easier to write and if you're writing an email for um Millennial women I'll say I'll say for a 38-year-old woman named Brit who is my wife uh that would play really well right because like that joke would just be very funny to her because she thinks clueless is very funny and it and so anyway the point being like if that's a major part of your audience they're going to love that reference and love that joke and it's yeah um yeah yeah that makes sense we talked about Universal humor and 's a lot of gifts and shows that are welln enough that they fall into that category so like the office parks and wreck like anytime you use a gift also it should be understandable even if you don't get the reference I get asked countless questions about how to implement the media buying practices that I talk about all the time people bring me specific questions my cost caps won't spend my cops cost caps are spending too much should I use tros how do I test creative Etc and the place to go get those questions answered is not actually by dming me is by going to admission because admission is a combination of three things all at once admission is ctc's learning platform and Community where there are courses pre-structured including this year like recent editions meta ads campaign structure in 20124 um a whole course on how to determine the number of ads you need to build how to set monthly Revenue targets Google best practices 2024 there's a bunch of recent stuff and there's always more of it coming into admission to keep you up toate on the best and latest learning from CTC and Taylor holiday and all of the stuff that they are getting across their ecosystem there so those courses come nicely presented in packaged so you can learn in clear ways but that's not the whole value of admission from there there's also a community of other people like you who are in admission uh seeking to grow their businesses with great financial principles great advertising principles they are there for you as well and then there's coaching and this is the the the most underrated value I think of admission you get access to ctc's team of media buyers to audit your actual account setup so all those specific questions you would have for someone like me honestly probably better answered by ctc's media buyers who are extremely experienced the ongoing price for that is an addition $150 an hour which is really really affordable for the level of Consulting help that you are going to get but actually if you sign up for admission through my link in the show notes of this episode that you're watching right now if you sign up through my link you get the first of those calls for free and if you pre-book a year of admission you get four calls for free there's also a 30-day money back guarantee so if you want to learn how to implement this stuff in your business that I'm talking about all the time go join admission there is no program nearly as good as that uh that I'm aware of go to admission jump in today I just want to keep doing tiny tactical tips for as long as we can tiny tactical tips okay frame filter is one of my favorite ones if we're talking about editing in the funny um I have a book recommendation it's called because internet by Gretchen mccul and it's about internet Linguistics and how language changes and how to avoid sounding like a a total poser when you say like wow these chips have Riz you know cuz no they don't um that actually could be its own funny thing though to just like do a lot of those references all wrong yeah a thousand per it's it's the millennial cringe thing to do once we start saying it it's dead for jenz and J Alpha right get them yeah yeah yeah um one fun thing that I like to do that's um sort of riding that line between copy and comedy is looking at the Linguistics of the copy itself so you write it straight and then you come back to the copy and you say are there any verbs or adjectives that could be working harder and more specific and within that after I've swapped out some stuff that punches a little harder uh can I use any linguistic tricks so alliteration is a big one alliteration actually is composed of consonants and asants repetition of consonant sounds and rep repetition of vowel sounds um that's more memorable right um I wrote uh like tiny tactical tips tiny tactical tips is one yes exactly um the longer that piece is that you repeat the stickier it is probably right so like taco tactics would be a repetition of that same Tac sound yeah but there there are combinations of words in the English language that are more rare than others and when we hear them they sound funny uh because we never hear them and that's called linguistic entropy so if you can bring in some linguistic entropy that's a way to be funny without making a joke uh and I will give you an example I came across an agency recently and the agency name is Dingus and zazzy and like Dingus is funny yeah it just is the combination of unusual sounds and zazzy is funny because we never hear that together it's hilarious right yeah and it's it's super memorable like if you're an agency and you want to be remembered you know one way to build your agency name would be to be like uh growly doio or whatever you know what I mean like that's just like fit into the way that everybody talks about their thing or right but another way to do it right would be to just like look at what everybody's doing and go like okay how do we just not sound like that at all right right and and you're saying you're saying there's a layer of that that's actually comes down to like the formation of letters like in terms of or the combination of letters yes um if you've ever watched Rick and Morty they do this all the time right let's discover how a plumbus is made first the Smur andorf is blurped into the cloop you know yeah right it's like kind of German but not really yeah yeah that's good yeah so you don't have to make up words but you can use words with more unusual combinations of sounds and also there are some consonants that are just funnier than others like K hard K or hard C Sound is very funny Cookie pickle yeah you know yeah that's funny yeah gosh um this is a detour that is probably should be edited out uh there's I was reading somebody doing a long joke about um busy town uh Richard scary's byy town the kids books uh that you may or may not remember anyway in busy town they drive pickles for cars yes and the writer was writing a whole scenario about how byy Town acquired a major league baseball team and brought that team from Tampa Bay to byy town um anyway and it's this whole ridiculous silly thing but one of the jokes he made a couple times was like was was drawing direct uh reference to the pickle cars and now part of it is the silliness of a pickle car but I I was trying to figure out why I thought that was funny and I I think you are right that part of it is because the word pickle is funny and then you have car which is another hard k sound hard that's so interesting I've never noticed that um in quite those ways yeah there is a great clip on John Oliver where he ends up with the punch line he's a perfect setup and he ends up with the punchline Benedict cumberbatch's cucumber cumber Bund and it's like oh just nailed it you know yeah yeah that joke is just like right there in your face you don't even need the you don't even need the setup but of course the setup is going to drri out more and it's j you just you can feel like just sort of like yeah there's a way of putting language right in your face that is sometimes very annoying in writing I think where somebody is just sort of like you can just imagine them writing a sentence and then being like look at how great I am at writing you know and that in fact sort of draws attention away from the words when it happens because it just is like so flowery you know but in that case it actually puts all the attention on the words themselves you like sit and think about it and go like that's really funny and you you bring up a good point which is that uh you can take this too far you can distract from the message and that's where editing comes in and sometimes you have to be like I love this joke but there are too many jokes in this paragraph I'm thinking mostly Landing in product pages like I need to cut something and we have to pick only our favorites to keep the focus on actually buying right because we've actually lost the idea somewhere at some point uh right like you don't want to get so into the humor of it that someone's like ha that was funny okay bye like no need to pay for it yeah yeah yeah okay that's uh good you also used a phrase earlier that I want to go to you said verbs and adjectives you reference vergin adjectives that adjectives that were not doing enough work for you can you give an example of some a sentence that includes a verb Andor adjective that is not doing enough work and how you might change it and if I'm putting on the spot here but if you could fine um there are plenty right so like get have enjoy um taste like they're fine and there is a benefit to using conversational language and short words that we use in talking to each other but like maybe get is Nab or snag uh or SE you know like it's choing words with more opinions um and then instead of an adjective maybe try putting in a comparison um which might set you up for a joke and I'm shamelessly segueing into my next tactical tip which was add more comparisons because those are opportunities to be funny but for example instead of um get the softest t-shirt you've ever worn yeah you know snag a t-shirt softer than a fuzzy bunny right then it's like oh okay we have a column here for t-shirt and we have a column here for fuzzy bunny what do they have in common eco-friendly super soft one survives the washing machine one does not so like there's your you know oh man I was thinking actually a step past your point to apply to a specific thing and then I came back around and listened to the actual joke and I thought it was really funny the um the the the point that I was getting to I was actually thinking about I was interacting with one of my very favorite um creative people in e-commerce which is Jess Bachmann from fire team Jess is a really really funny guy and um and just really just super creative um I I actually I probably mentioned this last time but I sort of put you and Jess in the same bucket in my mind of people who are extremely creative and talented in this way from whom there's a lot to learn and then also who you should just hire to do stuff for you um uh because you because I'm just not going to be as funny as you um and and so uh yeah the um I Jess had was working on an ad that started with a comparison to Gollum uh to somebody's relationship to some to the product being like or not to the product but to something else to Gollum and his precious no I was telling you that that was me no well maybe but actually this was in a Jess ad as well oh really okay we're all the same and so I just wrote an email like that and so uh and yeah that's I mean what I actually was thinking though is there was opportunity at the ad level to do that same joke five different ways and to think of like Gman is precious you could think of and I'm not clever enough to do this on the spot but like I was actually thinking somebody as creative and interesting as a thinker as Jess is would be able to um uh or as you or or there's plenty of people listening to this watching this who do this as well who would go like okay like Golem with is precious what else is like that relationship and then I one thing I think you could do this is take this to the hook level of an ad basically so you're referencing this with an email but because a lot of people are listening to watching media like are thinking about ads um like there's probably a way to use something like that which actually does convey a point the point being this thing is very important to me um and in in making that point you could then uh you could then uh come up with a better other analogies like that and maybe think about like okay would one of these play differently or better than the other one and at the ad level you could actually take the same concept of an ad and rehook it with a bunch of different like jokes or ideas like that um and and get really far and before you respond to that it appears that my four-year-old would like to be on this podcast really fast and he saying hello so laru can you wave and say Hi to Miss Lanna hi Miss and can you say hi to all the people watching or listening hi okay um we are gonna keep talking now I love you so much um and I brought a maple bar you brought a maple bar for me incredible news want to go get it after a little while should I go get it and put it on a towel for you yeah can you put it in the kitchen for me yes I okay I'll just leave it there thanks buddy will you bring me one too headphones he can't hear you no no Maple bar for you great news for me though walk in here with treats for me so rude yeah yeah yeah yeah um I in my head came up with two hooks from the um the okay go that's great so so you mentioned headphones I was already thinking headphones like okay buy these new headphones throw your old headphones into Mount Doom right full circle ties it in nice little bow for headphones that are more trustworthy and loyal than Sam wi gamg like we are doing the thing where we're applying a filter right we're applying Lord of the Rings RS this and you can just map characters and scenarios onto your product and your consumer yeah I I mean I was also thinking you could just like in this case especially because like the goal I think the goal of humor in a lot of these things is to partly just to capture more attention from somebody just to get somebody to stop doing the thing of just like going through email your product's going to arrive at this time and this how you use it I've seen 4,000 emails like this but it's just like yeah break the pattern just like find some way to get somebody to stop and notice you and have a moment like you said it's more memorable and so if you yeah anyway you can play with this idea a lot of different ways and I think an underrated I guess what I'm saying is an underrated way of hooking ads is to take an idea which is something is very precious to someone and then to restate it with like a comparison and to and then to try that with five different comparisons something like that so yeah especially if you know you're making a reference to something your audience already loves totally totally I I think humor at the ad level can be so hit or miss because it absolutely gets attention but if the call to action is obscured by the humor then it's just another meme in the feed right yeah so I've seen some really hardworking ads that converted like crazy um humor Concepts but I've also seen ones that totally fell flat especially static ads um because you're just like oh haha bye yeah yeah yeah that yeah that that is right uh this is where and yeah I think I was actually saying this to Jess the other day too one one thing I think about sort of the media buying method that I talk about a lot is that because you have the ability to to try a lot of different ideas and a lot of different like Hooks and variations of copy and things like that you you you sort of get freed to take more risks and and I think that's some of what we're talking about here like because what will happen is if your ad works then your um then meta will spend on it if your ad doesn't work meta won't spend on it so if your if your risk doesn't pay off it's fine meta is just not going to spend on your ad if you are buying that way and that's in some ways is like risky than like a post purchase email where you've now got a customer and you want to treat them in a certain way and so it's maybe a good place for people to try some of these things is just like take some bigger swings in those moments resist any possible way of being boring and and take some of the things that you're talking about here lyanna and just go like can we can we yeah can we try some things that we wouldn't otherwise try at the level of hook because the whole goal of the hook is to capture is to get engagement and to capture attention yeah I think that's why you see so many viral ad formats going around even with brands that like are not funny and don't to be funny but they're like we'll try thission of the video where we cut out everything but the like yeah I haven't but I I immediately get it yeah yeah yeah yeah um okay uh comparisons that's was a tiny tactical tip do have a tiny tactical tip um what else uh oh um another blend of good copy practice and comedy opportunity uh I see this a lot again on product descriptions but sometimes in ads uh where you have a series of things and that series would be more Vis like visually better presented as a list of bullets right so don't make me work don't make me think I don't want to read this whole series turn it into bullet points and then make one of the bullet points a funny thing uh depending on how hard you want to go the funny thing can be the last in the list of bullets which is how it should be in a in a series like unfunny thing unfunny thing funny thing or if you want it to be more subtle and you have a longer bullet list you can hide it in the middle somewhere so that you're rewarding a reader who's reading through they're still getting the information but they're like oh okay yeah um okay I love that where where do you think the place to do that is is that like on the pages a lot in the description yeah if we have a bullet point list um and you sometimes see like the humor ramping up throughout the bullets or if we go back to the t-shirt example it's like you know ring spun cotton super soft uh available in sizes extra extra small to 5x uh like for your smallest baby to your largest Uncle I don't know that's not that's not funny um but then like has been known to cause people to mug you you'd have to cut this down right but the theme is like people will rob you for your shirt right so it gets absurd as we go through the list of bullet points yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I yeah exactly okay in yeah that yeah I love that okay that's great um are there um like do you think that requires sort of being it's almost like a heightening thing is what it sounds like you're doing like it's like you take this list of things and then you're going like okay well yeah does that make sense it can be it can be or it can be a lateral presentation of items um like in the I think the the T-shirt example I gave before was um super soft like a fuzzy bunny um two things they have in common and then but only one of them can survive the washing machine like that's sort of a lateral presentation of important items yeah not making sense I know that I'm not explaining this well well I think I get the the idea completely right which is just like you've got the list going add something funny into the list just it's almost like that same principle which is just like just resist making the thing that everybody has seen boring people know what sizes you have people know what like you know like you add something else in there and it's just like they need they need information right a PDP has to convey certain amounts of information that are important for people to understand why they can safely get out their wallet and buy your product but at some point in there do something that breaks it up and a way to come up with those ideas is you know how can we make them smell this feel this taste this because that leads you toward more specific images okay you know can we talk about smell and taste for a minute uh this feels like a specific challenge of e-commerce and if you don't have anything to say about this it's okay but I've I have I currently have a smell client and I have a taste CL and I've been thinking about uh this a lot which is like how do we do a better job like I mean let's tactically how do I use language to convey something that is fundamentally non-c conveyable on the internet like I can create a great image for something that is you know I know what to do with apparel to make somebody like imagine what it would look like on them there's some visual things you can do there Etc but like I have to get somebody to figure out how to how to taste fruit like how do I do that how do perfume brands do it right you you paint this picture and the picture is actually more about the brand than it is about the end result but like okay can you give me an example of The Taste one like what's the product okay yeah sure uh it's a it's a farm that sells exotic fruit um and so yeah I know I thought yeah you're the exact right person but um but let's take they sell um let's say passion fruit um they grow passion fruit and to hear them tell it and I believe them uh they grow their passion fruit in the best region in the world to grow passion fruit and so during the peak of passion fruit season they sincerely believe and I believe this I actually haven't tasted it yet myself but I'm going to buy some because they've told me this um that it is the best passion fruit in the world it is literally like because of the growing conditions and the seasons and all those things it is exactly the best pass fruit in the world it happens to be where their Farm is yeah how do I convey that to somebody tactically because I have to use words now to say because I can here's here's what Andrew Ferris would do in this situation what I would do is say I would show visuals first of all I understand you you should make sure it looks delicious that's that's classic food advertising how do I go to another step though and use words besides this is actually the best passion fruit in the world that's what I want to say what do I do I mean you have so many angles right you have texture you have flavor you can compare to things that they've had before you can compare to uh a more like nebulous or imaginative experience like you know taking one bite of this passion fruit will transport you to wherever sure um but like texture words like um buttery chewy uh I don't know describing describing the mouth feel like if they're growing the best passion fruit in the world they probably have this information right and they can you can go through and scrap this from your reviews the way that people describe your product is always going to be better than the way you describe it um yeah oh there was something else I was going to say best passion fruit in the world um oh yeah like you've had passion fruit but you haven't had this passion fruit so you've really only had like mildly interested fruit like casual huit it's right there in the name come on how do I not think of that I'm an idiot gosh yeah or you could even go the other like maybe this is stupid but like it's it's it's might you might as well call other passion fruit passion vegetable is that bad is that I kind of like that yeah that's how much better this is Passion fails yeah I don't know passion What fail yeah yeah yeah um but yeah but okay that's that's so helpful though because actually this is another thing where like I think down to the ad level what I'm trying to do is I actually believe we can we can convey all of those things really really well um uh post click like I think we can show with imagery and video and stuff like that but like there's just this I just know there's a still image out there of of a picture of great delicious looking passion fruit and certainly there's some subset of people who know exactly what good passion fruit looks like you know and then I want copy on the image to do some work to make somebody stop on this and go like I have to eat that and so the passion vegetable thing may not be that funny really but like but it is probably a better way of saying it than this is the best passion fruit in the world although me being me I would also make one of the ad say this is the best passion fruit in the world so if it's the best passion fruit in the world you're going to have this crazy experience when you eat it if you're going to have this crazy experience when you eat it where are you going to eat it uh are you going to eat it in public are are you going to care what you look like while you eat it because my brain immediately went to an image of a beautiful woman biting into a passion fruit with just juice everywhere like somewhere she absolutely shouldn't be like in a board meeting you know like on the elevator and people are like and the tag is like so good you won't be able to stop yourself or something like that yeah right yeah yeah that's it's a lot better of an idea than I thought of yeah okay um all right let's go keep going tactical um okay what other things should be should people do that are tactical ways of writing funnier things ways to write and funnier um a really easy one is to capitalize words or italicize words or however you like to emphasize them for inflection so the way that I just went inflection you know you might have like italicized that it's it's got a little little zing on it when I say it out loud but we don't get that in writing um so to add more of a Cadence a spoken Cadence to your writing go through and emphasize a word here or there and you could you could do it as if you're yelling there's a detergent brand uh that used to say like life is so difficult day to day you've got the dishes the laundry oh my God the laundry and they're like yelling laundry in all caps um notably only that one word yeah that's really effective it's really effective and you hear it um and in that same vein you can work in Anam anopia words so like instead of saying um the door slams behind you as you race home to dig your face into this passion fruit you know it's like crash that's all the knick-knacks falling off your shelf because actually that lights up a different area of the brain um when you describe a noise purple does does this in their order confirmation email bonus points for them uh they actually just describe the noise inside asterisks they say awesome explosion noise your order is confirmed and you're like cool I can do whatever I can describe whatever noise I want like 10,000 angels playing tiny trumpet fanfares yeah you know you hear that like it's whatever the reader wants it to be and that's such a fun thing to do yeah that's really good um okay I love that so points of emphasis do you think there's a general principle here that people ought to be um reading their copy out loud so they know what it sounds like oh a th% um another tip that I use myself is like read it out loud as if I'm Morgan Freeman like if you it doesn't matter how good your Morgan Freeman impression is you're automatically going to slow down and sort of give it that gravitas yeah it's a it's a passion fruit but it's unlike any other fruit you've ever had it's me Morgan Freeman I love passion fruit I see it's so bad it's not a good Morgan Freeman Impressions but it works I don't know why you like that uh you know what I like is that this is actually this podcast episode is a good illustration of like the principle here which is just like I just have I've just never I mean I do podcast after podcast about uh meta media buying tactics and the financial things for your growth and no one's ever done a Morgan Freeman impression LNA and that's the that's why I'm laughing first time for so so look whether or not it was a good Morgan Freeman impression it's it's the best one that's ever been on this show so yes participation trophy is mine no you win you're number one and I think if I went and tried to do mine uh it would be worse so oh it's it's really bad it takes me a while to get to do it you can also read it as Batman you know and I will spare you from my Batman impression yeah I used to have a standup bit that was like things Batman would never say in Batman's voice which is pretty fun we out of TS you okay that's it that's that better Batman than have been Morgan Freeman I think thank you yes I mean yeah that's a good joke did you did people I feel like people would laugh at that joke that's a better joke of jokes I don't ever I never really bombed when I did up I was very lucky to never why don't you do more do you do more now um no it's like so competitive in Austin that it took all the fun out of it for me the scene in New Orleans is really small and friendly and the scene here is like large and mean I don't know I just don't maybe it's because I went to a stupid place the only time I have been to Austin really um I um went to dinner alone one night and happened to be a um like open mic night and it was so bad uh and I don't remember okay uh it was on I don't I'm not goingon to even do Austin I don't know Austin at all um and it was so bad and so I hear you say that I was like well you would have been better than those people that's for sure but it's so one of the showcases that I did 3 weeks in a row I did 10 minutes until the Showcase disappeared because it was at this sake place that serve dinner where unsuspecting people came in to just drink terrible sake and have me for dinner and then they were subjected to Comedy against their will and they were trying to have conversations anyway it was horrible um so I missed doing stand up but it's just maybe this was like a food truck Circle spot in is Fifth Street of thing uh dirty dirty what's dirty something 36 six yeah I don't know if it was there it was maybe on a anyway I don't remember okay um okay what else what's next uh tiny tactical tips go tiny tactical tips um playing with the space as if it's not just like paper or you know it's not just a place to present images and text um what if it's a tiny stage what if it's a a prediction like what if it's the meteorologist screen or green screen um what does it mean to leave a lot of space you've probably seen this in some text based emails where it's like hold on I need a minute enter enter enter enter enter like here we are maybe with a period in each one just so people know that yeah yeah right or not um yeah yeah I I just think it's so fun uh you can play with font size and orientation and space to be like this isn't just an email this isn't just a product page this isn't just ad this is something else that's happening um it's very much you know what if this weren't uh paper uh one brand I saw did this and said um everything is on sale for the holidays oh sorry for the Australians in the room and then they flipped everything is on sale for the holidays upside down and pasted that upside down text in and I was like that's [ __ ] hilarious that's so good to be it doesn't have to be crazy right um yeah I also like tiny little text you know because people are paying attention reward them so sometimes in my emails um I'll be like you know I'll write the whole email and then at the end I'll be like you look hot today and your mom loves you you know in like 5 a text or uh in our pet brand emails I've done things at the bottom that say uh oh look a tiny hamburger you know and then put the hamburger Emoji in there like we're having fun right we yeah right it's a real hamburger now yeah that's so good um okay uh gosh that's great uh we've got uh we're we're hitting towards the end of time I'm good on time but um I want to make sure that if there's any other uh of these that we just like rapid fire them out what other ones can people do um uh oh okay Rapid Fire have a [ __ ] doesn't have to be that rapid but yeah okay well have a [ __ ] opinion have an opinion take a side um whether in copy and improv it's always more interesting when you have an opinion on the product or the issue uh and you make that clear you have a strong emotional feeling behind it that leads to funny things can you do that uh with things that are not actually uh controversial like what I mean is like like the passion fruit example I'm I'm trying to understand the principle I really like so like essentially like taking the opinion this is literally the best passion fruit in the world and everybody else is wrong is that is that what you mean like you sort of position it almost like you're arguing and it's like here's why every other passion fruit in the world sucks yeah they're dry they're mealy they're stringy they're pulpy they were grown under poor conditions like in in sandy soil that makes them shitty and you're displaying your knowledge during all of this and like yeah and then you get an opportunity for self-deprecation where it's like wow Rachel seems like you really care about passion fruits yes I am passionate about passion fruits you know yeah yeah um you can okay poke fun at yourself and and people do this all the time this is very much a branding move where it's like I looked around for a version of this thing and it didn't exist so I decided to make it we've seen that founder story yeah and it it works it's really cliche but it really works yeah okay great okay okay another good tip use what you know uh go back to your customer research go to your reviews go to your survey responses go to your um customer support chats and pull out sticky phrases you probably do this to find hooks uh for ads or yeah um what else uh oh create a character use what you I mean how do you turn that into something funny use it use know um this is so use using what you know in improv uh makes it much easier to get to specifics in a scene if I'm starting a scene and I decide to be an astrophysicist I have to make everything up and that's really really hard uh I see what you're saying so all you're saying is so in right okay so you're saying when you approach your brand and when you approach framing or any of these things don't feel like you have to go be an astrophysicist or whatever yes yes thank you for improv well don't think that you have to depart from what they're saying to you just to be original because it's probably GNA better if you don't that's really good is there another version of that that's the opposite which is like to do astrophysicist but then completely make everything up like just like in in a way that just I feel like this is like an improv thing I've seen which is like you somebody says they're an astrophysicist and then and then they just start making up words that sound sort of astrophysicist to you to somebody who's not an astrophysicist it's really hard to do but that's very funny right when it's done well I just saw a scene like this it was a pretend panel show uh where somebody was playing the really smart astrophysicist somebody was playing an astrologer and somebody was playing like an alien in a skin suit and each of them got a chance to answer but the all of these frames you know you already know what they're going to say when they get to them it's like um well Mercury's in Gatorade so yeah but mercuries and Gatorade is a great use of that that's really funny right yeah we didn't even talk about the five senses of humor this time and I'm not going to make you do a third podcast episode with me yeah I don't know if we touched on it last time but this is another way to think about the the sense of humor that your brand has I mentioned that most brands go for that like holesome you know non-offensive kind of funny style and you know it when you see it but there's also dark and morbid right there's low brow and crass which is where poop and sex jokes live there's high brow and intellectual um was it Moosejaw Moosejaw the the mountaineering brand or was it another mountaining brand they uh they posted something once that was like had a dream that I combined the song Too Legit to Quit with K's categorical imperative uhhuh and it's like okay we get it you're smart and that's what highbrow jokes do you have to like be in on some sort of cultural or intellectual knowledge um yeah but the the point of that is to call out to the to the people who get the joke and to leave the other people on the table basically right exactly or there's people on the table who are like yeah I totally get that I'm gonna buy this because I want to be affiliated with smartness yeah like yeah okay great yeah that's interesting that that's like that's that joke is a is a decision that B that that has a lot of things behind it uh yeah it's interesting yeah and if you don't get it it you're not you know actively harmed you're just like okay but do get it you're like good for me nobody likes you yeah yeah exactly congratulations you red con you don't have any friends go nearing alone yeah right um the my version of that is that I basically get the joke but haven't actually read K which probably said a lot of bad things about me actually hey me too it's like exactly like the it's the actual very worst person person on that like which is like can reference the joke but doesn't really understand it you know like but wants you to know that you know yeah there's two of us in this club yeah great um okay um any other last ones there's you you uh you've got okay great yes I just want to make sure you don't leave any Mega winners on the table here I'm I'm hoping I'm not but the one of my favorites is um create a character uh and it doesn't have to be like a fully branded thing that you get designed and animated it can just be like someone who doesn't actually work at the company you make them up um and sometimes that gives people more leeway to be silly because it's not them right uh I have this thing behind me which is lit moose you can't see him but he's a stuffed moose that's litmus email marketing companies um that's their moose right and so lit moose sometimes sends emails at our pet brand we sometimes send emails from cats uh I might have mentioned this last time but an Australian Financial servicesan company uh asked me to write from the point of view of their new mascot which is a goldfish wearing like a strap on sharks fin and we called him fish shark and so I wrote a whole email in their new client welcome sequence as if he were flopping around on a keyboard being like it me fish shark just here to tell you you can save with blah blah blah oh no hear noises must get back in tank you know uh there's so many different ways to like invent somebody I I've worked for an Ecom store where their abandoned carts came uh and they told the story of Kyle uh who is the intern and Kyle is like really counting on you to check out and if you don't he's going to cry and the next email Kyle is crying and the next email he's under his desk and we're calling his mom and he's really upset because he worked really hard on this product and like can you please just check out yeah yeah I've heard this before I actually haven't but it's it I get I mean there's just a lot of yeah it's not a huge deal to us but Kyle's really upset about you know whatever you sort of like almost like Rel the anxiety kind of thing right it's like by like pinning that on Kyle you sort of ask for the sale without without seeming desperate and throwing discounts at people and you're like what's going to happen next I better open this next email to see what KY is up to so it's a good way to get people to open um they still get replies to that sequence being like May great job it's been I'm sure I mean it it comes back to the thing the way I framed our first episode which is just like res like it's just about not being boring a partly and just doing doing things that are just going to be interesting and fun and look I mean one of my things when I hear this stuff is like I bet we could make Brands money by doing it and it will work and it'll be effective but it also just sounds like it would make my life more fun and interesting to work on things and that is like a real thing like a lot of the stuff we're doing here is not going to solve world hunger you know and and you'll make plenty of money if you execute the brand well and think financially effectively and all those things there is something to be said about the idea that like yeah I don't know there's probably some roundabout way to make a financial argument for this beyond the conversion rate you know like oh it'll help your retention because people will like your brand and they'll be proud of it or something like that maybe but also it just sounds fun it just sounds fun to work on and like it's a thing that you're people watching listening to this are pouring their lives into these Brands and like it's just fun just do something that's fun interesting we I mean we talked last time this very lofty ideal of like bringing more joy into the world right uh cuz it's rough out there and we're all going to die and like we might as well be enjoying it but on a real on a on a day today level doing this kind of work can make your culture more fun sure you know within the brand like if you have inside jokes and a culture of like try it see what happens you know with humor it's just more fun to work there so people will stick around yeah okay people what they should do is hire you for things they should hire you to write yeah to write stuff for you as you can see Lanna is way quicker to the jokes and way funnier than uh than me and certainly than you dear Watcher or listener um so because I mean I'm pretty funny but Lanna is a lot funnier than than than all of us so uh anyway have her do it and um and execute it for you by going to punchline copy.com she is the founder of that and as she would say the head puncher it's a great joke uh there's a yeah there like a anyway uh uh go go hire her uh and then follow her on Twitter as well and keep uh enjoying her content there and then DM her there and then hire her later if you don't hire her right now uh you could do that at punchline copy yeah that's okay I thought I had that right great uh all the links of course are in the show notes for those things Lanna thanks for coming back on such a short time period and for doing tiny tactical tips uh for how to do this this was extremely fun thank you thank you so much I loved this all right if you like this episode The number one thing you can do to say thanks for that is to share it with somebody who you think would get value from it as well and of course subscribe wherever you're watching or listening if you'd like to reach out to me uh make sure to do that at podcast a jf.com or andrewj Ferris the links to follow up with Lanna and all of my sponsors including Billy and admission are in the show notes go check those out thanks so much for watching for listening I'll talk to you next time [Music]