Years ago I had a client ask me “What tone are you trying to set with this piece?”
We’d written great copy, and I was pretty enthused. I said something pretty close to: “I hope they bang on the table and say that this has to change.”
And I, of course, I banged on the table.
They thought I was overly dramatic, and they toned down our copy by removing emotion and adding facts and weasel words.
But I was right. Facts weren’t the solution. Emotion was.
And you’re right, too, if you’ll try to have your donor pound on the table regarding your cause.
In chapter 2 of Donoricity, I wrote about connecting with donors through emotion:
“Richard Restak, who wrote the book The Secret
Life of the Brain. Restak once declared that, “We are not
thinking machines, we are feeling machines that think.”
Another favorite quote of mine is by poet Theodore
Roethke, who writes in “The Waking” that “we think
by feeling.”
What these guys are saying is that we make decisions based on our emotions, not on factual information. Even if we don’t think we are.
I’ll add this quote from another smart brain-guy:
Don’t fear emotion. That’s what drives action (donations). What do you think? I’d love to know what you’re feeling about this.
st
Photo credit: joeshlabotnik
