Tuesday, December 06, 2005

V-factor: Adding Believability to Your Copy

One of the tools in my arsenal for creating effective copy is to make sure it contains a healthy dose of verisimilitude.

Before you go off running to your dictionary, here’s the definition of verisimilitude from dictionary.com:

1. The quality of appearing to be true or real.
2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

Note that verisimilitude doesn’t mean that something is true – just that it appears to be true. Something that’s false can have a high degree of verisimilitude, while a truthful statement can have little or none.

Because I get tired of typing verisimilitude, I call this aspect of marketing communication the V-factor. Making sure your copy has plenty of V-factor makes a big difference in getting people to respond to your offer.

Here’s an example:

I have a client who tells me their B-to-B technology product improves a certain performance metric by up to 200 times. That’s an improvement of 20,000%.

Given the price of this product and its ease of installation, this is very impressive. The only problem is, quoting a 200-fold improvement doesn’t have much V-factor because it doesn’t quite ring true. It just seems like a rough estimate, not a firm statistic.

Perhaps the calculation of this performance improvement really did come out at exactly 200 times. But perhaps it was really 204 and was rounded down. If that’s true, then citing the 204 statistic improves the V-factor of the claim.

This reminds me of the story of how the height of Mount Everest was first calculated.

According to the Wikipedia entry, the first survey of the mountain was made in 1856. Using the sextants of the day and existing tables of trigonometric functions, they calculated the height of Mount Everest at 29,000 feet – right on the nose.

However, the survey team feared that 29,000 feet sounded like a rounded estimate (lower V-factor), so they arbitrarily added 2 feet and reported a height of 29,002 feet (higher V-factor).

(In actuality, a Chinese team used a GPS device that showed a height of 29,015, not counting the snowpack, so the 1856 survey was not far off.)

V-factor doesn’t just apply to statistics. You also need to consider it when making offers. When presented with what seems to be too good to be true, we get naturally suspicious. Why, we ask, is this company being so good to us?

For example, in October I received a mailing from a company offering furnace tune ups for just $79 – 56 percent off their regular price.

If they just left it at that, I wouldn’t be too inclined to call them. Sure, that’s a good price, but I’d be somewhat wary of a company offering that kind of steep discount. However, they offered a believable reason why they’re offering that kind of pricing.

The letter pointed out that the company receives a great volume of calls starting in December, so their technicians get swamped. They don’t receive nearly as many calls in November. So to keep their technicians busy in November, they make this offer.

Quoting the letter:

“The more tune ups we can do while it’s still ‘warm,’ the more lucrative breakdown calls we’ll be able to take care of after the cold snap. And the better the offer I’m able to make you now.”

This adds a lot more V-factor to the promotion, because I can now see a believable reason why I’m getting such a good deal.

The mailing was evidently extremely successful, because when I called, they were already booked for November. They did agree to send someone in early December, and still honor the $79 price.

I’m also reminded of a radio commercial I regularly hear offering mortgages with no closing costs. The commercial points out, “We make enough money on your loan so we don’t have to stick it to you for closing costs.” Perhaps they do charge a higher interest rate, but the no closing cost part of the offer rings truer presented in that manner.

Anyway, I think you get the point by now. When making what might seem to be outlandish claims or offers, make the communication believable. Make sure it has plenty of V-factor.

Posted by Richard Bloch

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