We think of ourselves as the dominating species. We’ve been around for 200 thousand years, yet the dinosaurs survived for 165 million. Insects have survived 480 million, and plants for 700 million.
The most obvious differentiator is our ability to manipulate our surroundings like no other species. We are inventive, and our inventiveness increases exponentially.
But that only occurs because a few people make it so. They have an ability to see things the way they could be.
Those people understand that life is about the future not the past. They also know that opportunity exists only in the future not the past (opportunity is about what we’re going to do next).
Opportunities with potential are taken up by early adopters, and the early adopters drive the rest of us.
It’s the same for every species. It’s how life works. Underneath our thin modern facades is a 200,000 year old machine. We’re really not much different today than we were 200,000 years ago, it just looks that way.
Like all machines each of us has characteristics that have barely changed, and it’s these characteristics that we need to uncover if we want to write effective copy.
Put a bunch of characteristics together and you get character, so it’s no surprise to learn that every living thing has (and is) a character. Members of the same species recognise these character types and create tribes of them (called culture).
When we study a particular character in depth, we start to learn the characteristics of a particular culture, and it’s understanding those characteristics that allow us to write compelling copy.
Figure out what motivates each character type and you discover the right buttons to press.
Do that and you win – you will have more clients than you could ever handle, and you’ll be able to bring them on board with little effort.
It’s not easy to do this, but that’s the goal if we truly want to become great copywriters. Human behaviour is not one thing. It’s all of it.