About the project in this case:

These are “online psychologists” services like Alter, Yasno, and Zigmund.Online (Russian online therapy platforms).

They call themselves “Easy Life Center”.

Maybe one day I’ll write a fuller case about them (most likely, yes), but right now I’m focusing on the copy.

Everything below is written in my voice:

Creatives:

First, here’s the copy that someone read and edited after me:

And the image that went with that copy:

And here’s how it performed:

My edit:

First, look at the result:

How does that even happen? A piece of copy that produced results got edited into a piece of copy that produced exactly zero results.

Here’s the copy itself:

And the image had no captions:

Even the likes differed:

Why it happened:

You probably already noticed: the two versions start differently.

“To figure this out, let’s introduce a few concepts.”

Say thanks for these concepts to Daniel Kahneman — Thinking, Fast and Slow (RU edition: “Думай медленно… решай быстро”) — and Phil Barden — Decoded (RU title: “Взлом маркетинга”).

Both books use the idea of “Autopilot” — that’s “System 1”. It runs regardless of what we want. For example, try to name the colour of the word, instead of reading the word.

Did you feel that friction?

That’s called “cognitive load”. You were wrestling your Autopilot. When Autopilot gains experience, that’s implicit learning.
There’s also the “Pilot” — System 2 — and the learning there is explicit.”

Back to the subject:

Remember: people don’t read copy only explicitly — consciously. They also read it implicitly, catching cues tied to the meanings of words.

Meet the amygdala. That’s people. People are the amygdala:

You can read more — HERE, and I’ll give you a quote from Wikipedia:

How ad copy works:

You don’t write it for explicit reading. You write it for the amygdala to react. When you write copy, build it as a chain of stimuli.

I once coined this thesis:

Advertising is explicitly understood values in implicitly perceived packaging.

We read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. My job is to place “trump cards” — cues that the amygdala picks up first — and then the prefrontal cortex figures out what it means, whether it’s worth spending time, and then money.

Meet the prefrontal cortex, that’s people. People are the prefrontal cortex.

A quote from Wikipedia:

My job is to move a brand’s value from point A — an amygdala reaction — to point B — prefrontal cortex processing.

What else helps me with copy:

Information asymmetry is when you have more information than the person you’re talking to.

The brightest example: when an employer hires someone, they have information asymmetry about how their work actually operates. A candidate in an interview has information asymmetry about their own skills, and how they can, and will, work.

I once memorised a description of panic attacks from Twitter (blocked in Russia). I’m curious. I like learning how the world works.

At one point I had a good tradition: starting every morning by reading Wikipedia. That’s how I learned that not every girl needs a bra long before the “bra wars” blew up on TikTok and Twitter.

I put myself into the copy. That’s how a human appears in it — someone talking to another human who’s reading.

A few takeaways:

The version that wasn’t mine showed up when a new project manager joined the project.

She said the copy was fun, and it just needed tidying up.

She tidied it up.

When she saw the difference in numbers, she asked me to write the next retargeting copy.

This happens a lot: clients or LPR (decision-maker; RU business slang) at different levels think they know better. I don’t argue. There’s always a chance they really do know better. I suggest split-testing my copy against theirs. So far, their version hasn’t outperformed mine. There’s a mathematical proof that placing creatives side by side is the right move.

I think this happens because they’re the client, and I’ve been writing consistently since 7 January 2020 — at least one text a day. Since autumn 2020 I’ve been on the freelance market as an SMM specialist (social media marketing; RU job title) and a targetologist (paid social ads specialist; RU slang). Back then I sometimes wrote five texts a day.

One last thing:

If you think the image is the thing that decides everything, here’s the same copy from before Rita picked different graphics:

So… maybe you’ll leave my copy alone and just hire Rita and me to work on your traffic? :)))

Credits:

I worked on this task as the lead on this project.

My links:

VK (major Russian social network): https://vk.com/bo_target, https://vk.com/the_redbeard, https://vk.com/mentorbo

Rita, my teammate:

https://vk.com/hikaru_snow

Easy Life Center:

https://vk.com/easylife_center