One Secret that Makes Headlines More Memorable

If you happen to be advertising a particular brand’s product, Ogilvy says it’s best to use the brand name in the headline. If you do, even though people may forget specifics of the product, they still might remember the name.

“Our soap has 20% more aloe in it,” will be less effective than “Happy-Body soap has 20% more aloe in it.”

This is a very important rule in a society like ours. There are thousands of ebooks out there, dozens of soaps, a zillion places to get a steak. There is no shortage of products of any kind, so why should someone pick your product? Is your soap really different from the dozens of others? Somehow, consumers doubt it. Instead, they buy based on one of two things: price and comfort.

If all products appear equal, a consumer will most likely buy the cheapest of the options. And if there are numerous brands, all priced within pennies of each other, often the product with the highest comfort level will win out. That means if the consumer recognizes the Happy-Body product name, but has never heard of Zippy-Acme that’s on the same shelf, he’ll go for the one he’s heard of. It hits home with him just a little more.

Most likely, if you can’t remember any specifics of a product you need, it’ll just come down to the one you’ve heard of the most often.

Familiarity may be boring, but it’s memorable and that sells product.

This is Part IV of our How to Write Effective Headlines series. For other installments see:
Part I, The Basics of Writing Effective Headlines,
Part II, Why You Need Newsworthy Headlines,
Part III, How Local Names Make More Effective Headlines