Web Vintage Literature

Chapter 5. How to Arouse Interest

Among magazine and newspaper writers the acknowledged form of successful short fiction is the human interest story one dealing with primitive passions, the incidents of which are common experience. Your wash woman and the heiress at boarding school, your office boy and the director of a great railway, are equally though perhaps differently affected by it. It deals with fundamentals. It ignores non-essentials. Human interest it is which packs the playhouse, which makes possible a penny press, which sells millions of magazines. Properly handled, it may be made the basis of nine-tenths of your successful sales letters.

Human interest is a vague term; one difficult to define and even more difficult to apply to a cold commercial proposition. Perhaps the easiest and quickest way to arrive at an understanding is to cite examples taken at random from several different industries.

Let us suppose we are writing to a woman on the subject of boys clothing. This is a subject, which lends itself readily to the display line opening described in the preceding chapter, so we will use it, thus:

DEAR MRS. MYERS

About that Boy of yours.

We have her attention, of that there can be no doubt, for the boy is the most interesting subject in the world to his mother, whether he be an effeminate little bookworm or the neighborhood terror. Now what statement can we next make to turn that attention into interest and lead naturally to our proposition? What little fact of human nature will open her mind, enlist her sympathy, gain her confidence and bring her to look at our proposition from the right standpoint?

He is arriving at the age when his spirit of manliness asserts itself. You find him imitating his father s manners he is using your embroidery scissors to shave with he is no longer ambitious to be a policeman, but has his eye on the Presidency. Among the serious problems with him today is this: he is beginning to want manly, square-cut grown-up clothes. He is no longer satisfied with ordinary boys clothes. He wants something like father s.

That is human interest. We touch upon that pathetically humorous period of transformation between childhood and youth in order that we may bring our reader to approach the subject of her boys clothes from the boys own viewpoint.

Again we may take as an example, a letter written by the manufacturer of an electric motor-controlling device who wished to persuade electrical contractors to use his goods:

Dear Sir:

I was on board the U. S. Monitor Florida when she was hit by a Whitehead torpedo containing 200 pounds of gun-cotton.

A ticklish position, you say?

Not at all. The watertight compartments of the Florida are controlled by Ajax Automatic Switches. When the torpedo hit us the Ajax Automatic closed the bulkheads. I felt entirely safe and secure because I knew the Ajax would not fail.

Here we have war, dynamite and sudden death as the elements of human interest. The writer referred to a subject that had had wide publicity. He added a bit of personal experience, gave his readers some of the inside history of an important event.

Again, a maker of eyewash might say:

Dear Sir:

Trouble with your eyes?

Ten thousand people went blind last year in New York State alone. Over 1, 000, 000 pairs of eyeglasses were sold. Are your eyes in danger?

Here we appear to fear primitive passion.

The whole object of employing the human- interest idea is to lead the reader naturally to the point of view from which we desire him to consider our proposition.

This is important.

In the stern competition of today, any successful sales plan must be given a peculiar, an individual twist. We must accentuate some point of superiority. And then we must bring our prospective buyer to view the proposition from that angle. This, in cases where one deals with people unfamiliar and with technicalities of our business, can be done best by the introduction of the human-interest element.

The problem of securing the interest of a man who understands thoroughly the general proposition we have to present, is somewhat more difficult. Quality, price, service and profit are what such a buyer looks at. Human interest can seldom be invoked to hold his attention. But there is a way technical interest we will call it for convenience.

Scattered about the world there remain a few know-it-alls to whom technical advances are a fallacy and the march of progress a stampede to ruin. But the generality of men are ready and eager to take advantage of every improvement watch closely every new development in their trades. In going to a manufacturer with a new machine, a new attachment for use on his product or even a staple material, immediate attention can be gained by attracting to his notice at once your leading point of superiority and explaining it tersely, technically.

If you are writing to an electric light man on the subject of a new incandescent lamp for use on his lines, get right down to cases.

Dear Sir:

An efficiency of one watt per candle is guaranteed for the Hi light Lamps, which efficiency is maintained throughout a guaranteed life of 1, 000 hours.

The attached report of tests by the Electrical Testing Laboratories will give you exact, detailed and unprejudiced information on this new unit.

To the general public, or to anyone unfamiliar with the technicalities of the incandescent lamp business, such an appeal would be unintelligible. To men who know, it is the surest as well as the most direct method of exciting interest.

The danger of an appeal to technical interest lies in the fact that we sometimes give our readers credit for more knowledge than they actually possess. Another, and graver danger is that we are liable to lapse into technical jargon in dealing with everybody, instead of reserving it for the few who know and appreciate.

There are, of course, any number of other ways to create real interest the kind of interest that will carry the reader through your descriptive paragraphs and lead him to the favorable consideration of your proposition. An appeal to the pocket, a bit of trade news, the citing of a difficulty which is worrying him and which your product or service is designed to over comeall of these are available.

But be sure that your appeal is to his interest that you are making the right kind of a personal appeal, just as the man in the high collar tries to get the interest of his more humble working neighbor. The common error is to ramble along on a subject, which is of interest to yourself, not your prospective customers.

We have just finished our fine new forty-acre factory, may be news but it doesn't touch a vital spot in the man who has been buying for ten years from your competitor with four acres of floor space, who giver personal attention to each order and delivers the goods promptly.

When you have your prospects attention, follow your advantage by appealing to his interest not by talking about yourself, your factory and your product. Hit him where he lives, is slang, but it has a grim significance to the writer of sales letters.

Hit him where he lives and his interest will carry him through your paragraphs of description, will lead him straight to your proposition, will put him in a frame of mind to say yes when he reads that proposition.

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Dear Mr. Benson:

Intimate question wins attention You believe in protecting your home from fire, don't you? But how about protecting it from the other elements?

Arouses interest The next time it rains, your shingle roof may leak, your ceilings may be water soaked and some of the choicest and most valued contents of your home damaged beyond repair.

For sooner or later, shingles are bound to warp and curl, pulling out nails and allowing the rain to beat in. Furthermore, they rot quickly when shaded and even though they may LOOK firm, they allow the water to soak through.

Argument But it isn't necessary for you to run this risk. For at no More than what ordinary shingles cost, you can get absolute protection in Flintold. Here at last is a roofing that will withstand year in and year out the most severe weather conditions.

Explanation runs into argument Flintold is made of the very best of raw materials. It is laid in three layers over the entire surface. Over that goes a red coating that oxidizes after a short exposure and makes a surface solid as slate and absolutely unaffected by hear, cold, or dampness.

Persuasion Just sit down for a moment and figure up how long it has been since your roof was put on. Can you trust longer its doubtful protective qualities? Flintold can be laid right over the old roof, as the booklet shows. [Inducement] The cost includes nails and cement and we pay the freight.

Clincher Simply fill in the dimensions of your roof on the enclosed order blank, sign and mail today.

Very truly yours

This letter is a good example of interest won and held from beginning to end. Almost every paragraph contains explanation, cleverly combined with other elements. Argument begins with showing the inferiority of shingle roofs, and continues through paragraph five. Proof of quality is found in the explanation of weather effects; persuasion, in the query as to the shingle roof; inducement, in the agreement to pay freight charges. The closing sentence brings action.

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