Here’s a technique that can make what you say or write sparkle. If you want to create a warm, fuzzy feeling inside your prospects, read on.
On reading this technique, you might think it’s quaint or silly; Super Salespeople will tell you it’s money in the bank. And I think the people who create animated movies with their talking toys and animals will tell you the same thing.
And the technique is simple. If your product could speak, what would it say to your prospects? And more importantly, what would it say after the prospect bought it and started to enjoy its benefits?
“Your hair will tell you it loves you.”
“This software will grab you by the hand and guide you step-by-step through the process.”
“This car told me it needs a caring, considerate driver.”
Give your product human abilities and emotions to make your copy more memorable. Using patterns like these will come as a hypnotic surprise to your readers. It also has the advantage of being another way to include embedded commands in your ads:
“My ebook just said, ‘Try me and read me tonight!’ I couldn’t agree more.”
And just when you thought linguists ran out of labels, having your product talk has a label too. It’s called Selectional Restriction Violation.
Here’s what John Grinder has to say on the topic in the context of hypnotic therapeutic intervention:
In every natural language there are words called predicates which describe relationships or processes.
These words pick out specific categories of experience in the models of the speakers of that language. Certain processes or relationships occur only between specific parts of the models of the speakers’ experience.
For example, using English, we are certain that the process named by the predicate drink has never occurred in any reader’s experience associated with the object designated by the word nominalization, as in the sentence:
So get your products talking and your bank account will proclaim its love for you.
In every natural language there are words called predicates which describe relationships or processes.
These words pick out specific categories of experience in the models of the speakers of that language. Certain processes or relationships occur only between specific parts of the models of the speakers’ experience.
For example, using English, we are certain that the process named by the predicate drink has never occurred in any reader’s experience associated with the object designated by the word nominalization, as in the sentence:
The nominalization drank two quarts of orange juice.
Linguists have characterized the kind of oddity displayed by this sentence as the violation of a selectional restriction.
Specifically, the predicate drink is said to have a selectional restriction which requires that it be used only with nouns which name sentient beings. Since the word nominalization does not refer to a sentient being, the sentence above contains a selectional restriction violation, thus explaining its oddity.
Erickson uses selectional restriction violations to force the client into a transderivational search for meaning. Erickson says, for example:
. . . a tomato plant can feel good. . . .
In the standard usage of the predicate feel, there is a selectional restriction violation which requires that the noun which appears as its subject be an animal or a human.
For most speakers of English, the sentence quoted above is peculiar; specifically, the selectional restriction on the predicate feel has been violated. The sentence doesn’t quite make sense.
In the context of hypnosis, this selectional restriction violation is puzzling to the client who, in order to make sense out of Erickson’s communication, activates a transderivational search for possible relevant meanings.
In this case, the set of Deep Structures generated by the transderivational search process will be identical to the recovered Deep Structures except with a noun substituted into the position(s) occupied by the noun(s) which caused the selectional restriction violation(s). Using the above sentence as an example, we have:
A tomato plant (deep structure) can feel good (surface structure). . .
One of the Deep Structures generated by the transderivational search process will be the Deep Structure associated with the Surface Structure:
. . . I (the client) can feel good. . . .
(from
Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, MD Vol. 1)
So get your products talking and your bank account will proclaim its love for you.
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