Excerpt from Gary Halbert’s “Million Dollar Smile” Ad

1. The hook immediately activates your imagination.

2. The statistics are a form of social proof. And the specificity makes it stick better.

3. We experience loss 2-10x more strongly than we do gain. What’s the focus here? Financial loss.

4. Twist the knife by describing the pain in detail - “cracked, worn-down and discolored”. Note how the repetition of the idea — but reworded just slightly differently. You probably didn’t care, but it was extra memorable, wasn’t it?

5. Note that the knife-twisting also happens to the same group of people as in the social proof. This is tact. There’s no need to risk insulting you by guessing you have defective teeth — you will naturally apply the criticism to yourself and feel the pain anyway (or, at the least, some sense of self-doubt).

For an in-depth look into human psychology on gain versus loss (and so much more), I cannot recommend highly enough “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.

You glance at your watch.

It’s 6:28. You’ve been at it since 3.
Crap. Your hot date is at 7. Running late. Sink shower it is.
Nowhere close to done editing…

“…at least all the ideas are laid out, so there’s that. Did I miss anything? I don’t think so? Ok, but how do I make it flow? I need to get the final draft to Stacey for design asap, team cutoff is at noon Thursday…”

You’ve spent dinner completely distracted. Your date just took off. You go home exhausted, plod to your desk, and crack open the laptop.

Or… it could go like this:

5:41 — you’re out of the shower and lip-syncing.
6:17 — dressed to the nines and zenned out.
7:03 — the sunset glints off your aviators as you smile hello.
8:36 — it actually feels like you’re hitting it off. Not just hot, funny to boot.
Next morning, 10:27 — polished draft ready in your inbox.
10:31 — Stacey messages back, “thanks, looks good!”

The difference?

You had Copygloss handle it yesterday afternoon.

For help with editing, email Dan:
[email protected].