Intro to Copywriting

Dr. Will Kurlinkus

Target Chuting
¡  Target Chuting: Focusing people’s attention on a target
thought, memory, emotion, identity signifier, or word
before asking for an answer or action. Triggering an
identity in them that is helpful to you. (Kenneth Burke calls
a similar process identification).

¡  Positive Test Strategy: When deciding whether a possibility

is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses,
for confirmations rather than gaps, it’s easier to register
the presence of something rather than the absence.

¡  Single-Chute Questions: Questions that focus your

attention and, thus, answers on one way of answering or
another. (remember are ethnographic interviewing
techniques?)
¡  How happy are you with the English Major?
¡  How dissatisfied are you with the English Major?
¡  Cult recruiters ask negative single chute questions then take
advantage of that insecurity! Are you unhappy?
Nostalgia Priming + God
Memories
¡  Starting mediations by having participants think
back to pre-conflict selves and ideal others.
¡  Nostalgia is an approach-oriented emotion; in
psychological tests “Nostalgia led to higher levels of
openness, which in turn contributed to
creativity” (Van Tilburg, et al. “The Mnemonic
Muse” ).
¡  How do you ideally view yourself?
Moral Foundations Theory
Jonathan Haidt
1.  Care: cherishing and protecting
others; opposite of harm “Show you love your country
2.  Fairness or proportionality: rendering
by joining the fight to protect
justice according to shared rules; the purity of America’s natural
opposite of cheating environment. . . . you will be
honoring all of Creation.
3.  Loyalty or ingroup: standing with your Demonstrate your respect by
group, family, nation; opposite of
betrayal following the examples of your
religious and political leaders
4.  Authority or respect: submitting to who defend America’s natural
tradition and legitimate authority;
opposite of subversion environment.”
—Wolsko, et al. “Red, White,
5.  Sanctity or purity: abhorrence for
disgusting things, foods, actions;
and Green”
opposite of degradation
The Focusing Illusion
¡  The Focusing Illusion: Whatever we pay attention to in a
particular moment we deem important.
¡  Survival tactic: pay attention to danger. To resources in front of us.
¡  Whispering important information. Clapping beats in speeches.
PowerPoint slides with single words.

¡  Agenda Setting Theory: The press’s ability to set the agenda.

To get us to pay attention to things. (If not persuading us to
feel a certain way.)
¡  Whatever is in the news must be important: No such thing as bad
press.
¡  Pictures of clouds made people value comfort of furniture over it’s
high price.

¡  Things that distract focus: Too many bullets, noises, pictures on

walls of classrooms, lead to worse outcomes/lower memories.

¡  Satisficing + Call to Action: Placing the ability to act as close

to the focusing message as possible. Sign up for an email,
vote now, go now, do this now.

¡  Debiasing: Distracting focus. Consider the opposite. What

would it be like if we were wrong?
Write Me a Script
to Get People to
Attend an
English Club
Meeting
 Ask Me a
Question that
Provokes Me To
Hire You in a Job
Interview or
Follow Up Letter
 What Should I
say in an email
to convince our
two graduate
candidates to
come to OU?
As a group write
a statement,
email, etc.
related to your
final project
using these
techniques.
 Now write a list
or rules for future
statements.