Okay, let me start this with a disclaimer that I’m going to mention the subject line of a SPAM email I received today as an example, however I am not–and do not–condoning SPAM as a marketing practice. SPAM is bad! But the example is good, so I use it:
I received a SPAM email today with the worst marketing subject line it could possibly have had, “Buy impotence drugs”. I didn’t open the message (it was SPAM after all), but in reading the subject line my first thought was “who would want drugs that make them impotent?”
I’m sure that’s not what the SPAM sender’s intended implication was, but it is how the subject line reads.
I had a similar experience many years ago while working at the U.S. Postal Service. One of my co-workers approached me one day seeking donations for a charity event she was involved with, and she handed me a pamphlet the event organizers had put together to raise awareness and money, the title of the pamphlet was “Support Breast Cancer”. Yep, my first thought then was “no, I think breast cancer is bad and I’m not going to support it”.
Of course I didn’t say that out loud, and I did donate to the event, but both of these very poor marketing lines make for a great example of how important it is to pay attention to your words when writing copy for your web site, articles or advertisements.
It is easy to forget that the eventual reader isn’t in your head and may not be “in tune” with you and your words, so pick them carefully, always re-read what you’ve written before publishing it and try to see if it can easily be misconstrued from your intended meaning.
