Forget logic. Short-circuit the process with emotion.

Or why the heart, not the head, is the ace up your sleeve.

So what was it? The 18th? No, I think it was actually the 19th EU summit last week. Yet another one that was supposed to sort out all the problems, once and for all. No, really. This was The Big One. At least, that’s what they told themselves. Bypass the governments and make bailout funds available direct to the banks. Sketch out the framework for a banking union. Push down those bond rates for the Club Med countries. And it worked – the euro jumped, bond rates fell and stock markets surged. But why, exactly? Looked at in the cold light of day, nothing much had changed. And several analysts said so, but that still didn’t dampen down the euphoria. Of course it didn’t. Because they weren’t thinking with their heads. They were thinking with their hearts.

Facts and a good story

Now, in a way, you can’t blame them. No important decisions are ever taken without a big dollop of enthusiasm, optimism and blind faith. We can’t know everything, so we take certain things on trust. We decide what we think in broad general terms, and then look for reasons to justify our choice. Yes, we do. All of us. All the time. Even you. One of the reasons that positive thinking achieves results is that positive thinkers are less likely to give up. So it’s not that they imagined success and willed it into existence. It’s just that they doggedly persisted when the negative thinkers had bailed. The last man standing is often the one whose invention succeeds, whose order book is filled and whose vision becomes reality. Because nobody else is stubborn enough to hold on that long, or to fly in the face of conventional ‘wisdom’. So, you’re thinking, how does this help me when I write copy? When I’m designing a marketing campaign? When I’m launching a blog, a newsletter, a social-media blitz? Yes, I’m thinking that too.

If you say so

And here’s what I think: you’ve got to believe before they do. You’ve got to see the vision, and buy into it – without that, they never will. And often, that vision defies logic. Monetary union? It’ll all come together in the end (fingers crossed behind back). Facebook business model? Yes of course there is one (and it’s not the data harvesting of its users – cross, cross). Personal training at an hourly cost that’s equal to your monthly gym membership? It’ll make all the difference (cross and keep jogging on the spot). When you’re ‘selling the sizzle, not the sausage’ (but not to the gym bunnies, I hasten to add) it’s important that you focus on the vision. The dream. The big-picture blue-sky stuff, though without all the bizspeak clichés. You’ve got to stop bludgeoning people to death with facts, and give them a bit of fiction. How does the story end? Come to that, what sort of story is it? A romance? An adventure? A treasure hunt? A triumph over tragedy? Humans aren’t rational most of the time. So forget reason, and try emotion. Appeal to their sense of fantasy, their dreams and their aspirations. Or put another way: sell the growth, not the austerity (you can always slip a bit of that in under the radar later). If you do that, you’re on to a winner. I’d bet my bottom euro on it.

Kevin Copywriting, Ideas, Marketing.