Episode 460: Copywriting With Todd Jones – Superlatives in Copywriting

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns talks to Todd Jones about Superlatives in copywriting.

Show highlights:

1. What is a superlative? 2. Why not to use them? 3. What to do instead of using superlatives?

• What is a superlative?
• Why not use them?
• What to do instead of using superlatives?

Show Notes

 Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and today I’m with Mr. Todd Jones and we’re doing his segment copywriting with Todd. How are you today, Todd?

Well, I I I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

Yeah, we’re better off talking, copywriting instead of WordPress these days, but that’s just the. Way it is.

I will leave that to Arnold Palmer. I’ll leave it to Palmer and I’ll leave it to mark and whoever else wants to talk to you about that. Stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll move on.

Yeah.

On.

Anyway, we wanted to talk today about superlatives and marketing. So where did you want to? Let me start.

Don’t do it.

OK, why?

Simple and direct to the point I want to give you a couple of examples and then I’m going to refer to three sources because I looked for three sources. Because I thought well. You know, I don’t want to just come off as tidal like superlative, so don’t do it, but I’m gonna go with actually 2 examples. The first one is for your audience. Everybody here is old enough to remember the movie elf when it came out. In fact, for some of you, that might be your favorite Christmas movie.

Mm-hmm.

It’s one of mine. I mean, I like that movie. Will Ferrell is a is A is a a legend comedy and Bob Newhart’s in it as well. So you know this is a really good movie, but everybody knows he’s not really an elf, but he’s raised by elves at the North Pole. It’s saying it’s works. Yeah, well, he sets off on this journey to find his roots, basically. To meet his dad, he goes to New York City, where his dad lives. And you know his his his foster dad and saying that both kind of warned him that he might not like what he sees. But he had to do it anyway. So he goes to New York, he meets his dad and he gets a job in. The toy department. And at his store, and one day he’s walking around, I presume. Manhattan and he sees a sign on a coffee shop. You remember what it said.

No.

Best coffee in the world he runs inside and says, yay, you did it. Congratulations. Way to go. And everybody’s looked at him. Like, what in the world is he talking about? And he said the sign says it’s the best color.

Oh yes.

In the world. You did it. You made the best coffee in the world now and his health. Mine Santa had the best hot chocolate in the world, which he does. I mean, everybody knows is well documented, that Santa has the best hot shot in the world. So he thought, well this place. So they use a superlative.

No, Chris.

To exaggerate a claim that wasn’t documented or verified, if you will now, a better sign might have been voted best coffee in New York by New York Times or something like that. That would have been a better option. But when you, when you make a claim from a marketing standpoint and this means you’re advertising as well.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to have for the sake of your audience some kind of verification, even either like you were voted that or some critic gave you that mantra or whatever. Here’s the second example in the town where I live, Conway, AR. There’s a burger store up the street now. I don’t know if they sell the sign up or not, but they did at one time. I don’t drive by there. Very often I haven’t looked. Best burger and town or something like that. And I would always kind of roll my eyes when I see that because up the street on the other side is another pretty good burger shop.

No.

Now, I will admit the burger shop that had to sign up is a pretty good burger. I’ve been there before. They make a really good burger and it may be the IT may be the best burger in town by a lot of peoples, you know. Liking but to just say it was the best burger in town without, like, voted by readers of like Kevin, Democrat Gazette or something like that. It’s just it’s not verified and it and it lacks sincerity and authenticity. When you do that. So those are my 3 examples. Now I I wanted to get some sources right a little bit of sources to. Kind of verify this. I don’t want to just, like, be superlative about superlatives. Right. So I’ll turn to Hennicke, who is the author of enchanting marketing as a blog. She’s a really good copywriter and I thought, well, she found subtle copywriting areas. And her first one is supportive. Laziness. And basically, she says the same thing. And essentially what she’s saying is it’s really lazy. And so you you what the way you do it, the way you handle it is just what I talked about you you give it some kind of verification. So you it comes across as inauthentic, not credible. That’s a big thing. You hurt your credibility. When you use superlatives and copy content. Uh, best product. You know, we we see this a lot in the WordPress space with plugins like best contact form plug-in. Oh really? I mean, you know, there are a lot of contact form, best page builder according to who so. You know you could do it. It could be done like you know, I know you have a jeweler, jeweler, a store and he could be like and I’m sure he doesn’t do this, but we’re the best jewelry store in the Toronto area.

Yeah.

According to who made response? Yeah, it’s very subjective. There’s very little credibility. You really hurt your credibility when you do that. So also found my friend autumn, who who wrote the grumpy grammarian copy editing book and she.

Child subjectives.

She talked about it as well, and so they talked about, you know, actually let me go back to another article. This lady did. She does a great job of telling you the difference between hyperbole and superpole this lady’s named Jin Jin Chen. Believe it or not, hyperbole.

Yes.

Exaggeration that is unrealistic and she gave example. This is so boring I almost died. So part of the highest degree of something, the best coffee in New York, she gave that example so. And she gives some examples like how you would change that, that kind of thing. But but really and and. And all everybody kind of agrees like using hyperbole, a sporadically can be like a disruptor, cause people to stop. Everybody knows a hyperbole is. Not realistic, right? I might say. Robb’s head is so big you can see it from the moon. Well, that’s that’s clearly how Curly, but that I could be using that as an example about how smart you are. Rob is so smart. His head is so big you can see it from the moon. I’m just trying to heap praise on you, but you don’t want to do that regularly in your copy or your content. It wants you want to hit people rarely in your copy. Copy content with a hyperbole, but super.

OK.

This, unless you can say you know. That is verified from a source. Now let’s see. Here’s some examples that autumn gets bad. We have the fastest signup ever, so think about a product like a A, some kind of software or whatever, she said. Better sign up in three steps so she uses specificity. To take what you’re trying to say, rather than just superlative fest here, here’s the next one bad we have the strongest website secure. 30. Better our security protects 12 million websites from hackers every day, so you see.

Give some quantification to it.

Yes, exactly. There’s some special sympathy there. There is a number, I think numbers and you know data numbers can be very effective. I I like to.

Yep.

Use them in social proof.

As long as you, as long as you can back the numbers up and you just didn’t pull them out of the air, which some marketers do by the way.

They yeah, exactly like it’s like 70% of all percentages are made-up, right? And then I made-up that same 5%, right. I always thought about McDonald’s. They would, they would have they used to have something like 2.6 billion burgers saved, served daily or whatever. I’m sure it’s a quantifiable number that you can find somewhere, but it it speaks to the, the, the, the breadth of how big McDonald’s. Is across the world. And when in the 80s when I was seeing that, you know, it’s pretty impressive. As a kid. All you know, it doesn’t matter if they’re the best burger or not. Maybe they’re the most eaten burger or something like that. The next one I thought was interesting is because we’re talking about burgers, she says. We have the tastiest burgers in town. That’s a bad example of using Superbas.

So.

Of a better example is 87% of our customers buy a second burger. I like that one, and then then she does one with logo. Our logo package is is the most popular, better 97% of our customers choose the logo package. So yeah you you make. Only read the next example because I think it’s good we have the most interesting content on the Internet, very vague, very general. But you know that it’s the most interesting, right? The better one, she says. Our articles are shared by more than 27 million people every day, so, she says, get rid of the superlatives to add credibility to your copy. It’s easier than tanking or taking your clothes off in front of a handsome technician. So that is actually hyperbole, right? She uses hyperbole. To illustrate the point, so I I. It frustrates me, Rob, because I see it in SaaS companies. I see it in everyday businesses who use, yeah.

Regular companies do it retail, do it. Restaurants do it all the time and it drives me insane. And it and I.

Yeah. And a lot of times they put it in their headlines and their titles, you know, and you’re like that that doesn’t, you know, you are not the best IT company in Toronto. You might be the one that serves the most people or have the most companies or some other verifiable quantity. But you’re not the best like for instance. Let’s say exciting digital market. You could say this is this is a super the best website security company in all of North America. Or you could say. Over 400 companies trust their website security to stunning digital marketing. See there’s a difference because I know you have about what 400 plan? Which section? Your care?

400 and 422.

Yeah, and that’s that. If you say it’s for company, then you some of those companies have more than one website, but say you say you do it for 350 companies. 350 companies trust their website security to studying digital marketing. That’s way better than saying we are the best website security company in all North America. Big difference.

By, by the way, you just changed one of the headlines on. My website as. We go. Thank you, one of the.

On the fly, no chart.

Anything else you want to add about not doing superlatives in marketing?

You know.

Covering.

We typically see that in headlines and titles and. Stuff like that. But you know you’re you’re making an exaggerated claim and and and and really, you know, you could be that there are times like let’s take Nike Coke those those could make claims for like Nike. I don’t use. I don’t wear Nike because I have a very wide foot, so I use New Balance.

Oh, so do I. Actually, for that same reason Charter, it’s a new.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

It’s unsolicited.

But it’s hard to deny that Nike is probably the most used sports tennis shoe on the planet. I mean, I could be wrong. I don’t. Yeah, I don’t. I mean, I can’t verify that. But, you know, they could make some sort of claim in that neighborhood just because.

Can’t I can’t.

It you know and and really the story and they brought out the movie a year or two ago, the Michael Jordan story and I hadn’t watched it, but. That is like how you know they were nobody and they they took a gamble on Michael Jordan. Now they’re probably the most well known shoe company on the planet.

If you want. If you want to read more about Nike, I would strongly recommend the book Foo Dog, the autobiography of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike Corporation. That kind of spells out how he started another firm, a Chinese who dropped, shipped and had a falling out, and then got it got created Nike out of the ashes of that, and it’s one of the best autobiographies in the retail space. Corporations I’ve ever read. So. Go read it, by the way.

When you have these mammoth companies that, you know, Procter and gamble like, it itself is a brand isn’t well known so much. But their brands under their umbrella is well known. So much so that now Procter and Gamble is known, but Coca-Cola.

Aye.

There’s probably not a more. Popular soft drink on the planet. I mean, I could be wrong. I mean it’s not verifiable per se, but I’m sure they have the biggest client base. They are the most with their brand. Awareness is the most thanks to the polar bear and the old 70s song. I’d like to teach the world thing. Remember that those two particular advertising campaigns have created a giant brand awareness.

They just.

So. What a lot of people try to do. Is copy these kind of companies well?

Well.

You can’t. Most companies can’t copy those companies cause they are huge and they have this brand awareness that in in this, this if you’re the top of the food chain, metaphorically speaking, you can do that. The rest of us, you know now, but what I would say is take advantage of specific specificity for like you like. You know, you you handle over 420 websites. If you’ve got some kind of verifiable number that you can point to that is a better way to go than just lazily throwing out. Best or greatest?

I would agree with you strongly some really good tips here. As I said, read the book shoe dog if you want to learn more about how Nike. No. One of my favorite reads. You want to learn a little bit about more how McDonald’s was built. Just Todd mentioned McDonald’s. Go read the book called the founder. The. The clock story. It’s about the founder of McDonald’s. Well, well, you can read that one as well. There’s also a documentary on Netflix called the founder, based on the book. But I would suggest reading your book first.

Yeah. Yeah, I watched the movie.

But it’s still.

I never did read the book.

Rake, proc and it’s still very enticing, but people don’t.

And he what he did and we’re getting away from our. We’re straying away from our topic here. But what he did was learn how to process products. Productize creating. Murder.

What he did more. More than that, though, Tom, what he did was realize how to create burgers to sell real estate. Because, let’s be honest, McDonald’s as a real estate company, not a burger company. And anybody that wants to shoot me, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll have that conversation.

There’s that too, yeah. No.

With them like.

Yeah, absolutely. But.

And.

Anyway, it’s but that that’s my topic of choice today. And you know, before you get ready to say we have the best burger in town or whatever pause for just a minute, minute and see how you can reframe that based on something that’s somewhat verifiable.

Todd, thanks for as always for bringing gold to the podcast. This is gold. You’ve already rewritten one of my headlines today, so keep going. The best dirty little secret as you know, is the podcaster gets its own private master class, which I get every.

ABC. Totally, yeah.

So thank. Thank you very much and we’ll talk to you soon. Have a great day, Mr.

All right. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.