La storia con il testo
SpeakerThere's a reason so few advertisements actually tell you to buy anything. Look closely at the language of persuasion and you'll find that the most effective messages rarely issue commands; they presuppose.
SpeakerConsider the difference between 'Try our new shampoo' and 'Rediscover what your hair has been missing.' The first is an invitation you can decline. The second smuggles in an assumption, that something is missing, and invites you to argue only with the details. Linguists call this presupposition, and it's remarkably resistant to scrutiny precisely because it's never stated outright.
SpeakerA second device is what I'd call strategic vagueness. Words like 'helps', 'up to' and 'virtually' are doing a great deal of quiet work. 'Helps reduce the signs of ageing' commits the manufacturer to almost nothing, yet listeners consistently recall it as a claim that the product reduces ageing. Our memory, it seems, is generous to advertisers: it edits out the qualifiers.
SpeakerThen there's the question of who is speaking. Advertising has increasingly abandoned the authoritative voice of the expert in favour of something that sounds like a friend: informal, slightly self-deprecating, conspicuously unpolished. This isn't a matter of style alone. Research on trust suggests that we discount messages we perceive as designed to persuade us, so the most persuasive message is often the one that seems not to be trying.
SpeakerNow, I don't want to suggest that consumers are helpless. Studies on what's known as persuasion knowledge show that once people learn to recognise these techniques, their effect diminishes considerably, though, intriguingly, not entirely. Even when we spot the trick, a residue of the impression remains. Which is perhaps the most unsettling finding of all: knowing how the magic works doesn't always stop it from working.
