In the spirit of full disclosure, this post about a headline tactic is “recycled” (it’s not plagiarism when I credit the original author) from an email I received from Kaleigh Moore whose newsletter I subscribe to.
Had she published this as a blog post, I would have merely shared her blog post on LinkedIn, but since I could not find a post on her site on this topic, I “borrowed” her headline, word for word, as well as the images she used.
The first two images show ads in a newspaper from 1939. The third image shows a modern headline from a story on some website.
Her point, which I think is unmistakably true, is our basic “formula” for creating headlines has not changed in the past 85 years.
Jump ahead to:
From 1939
From present time
The formula
The basic formula is 1) tease, 2) FOMO (fear of missing out), and 3) read more.
What they were going for in 1939, and what people are going for today, is what psychologists call a pattern interrupt. For copywriting, the pattern being interrupted is our habit of skimming rather than reading.
What makes a pattern interrupt work is when the readers idea about something is disrupted such that they stop, even momentarily, to ponder, which happens without conscious awareness.
Linguistically they’re similar to comedic redirections, where the comedian creates anticipation for one outcome then the punch line goes somewhere else.
The two part structure
Both use a two-part structure:
- Pattern interrupts: Initial interruption followed by some form of “learn more…”.
- Comedic redirections: Lead up to an unexpected finish.
Some people refer to pattern interrupts as “hooks” and you can find no end of advise online about using psychology to write killer hooks.
How do you get better at them?
Like anything else, the best answer is practice. Study the work of others, even people who wrote copy in 1939, and practice.
As with most things, the more you practice, they better you’ll get.