What Does The Real Housewives Have to do With Sales Copy?

Do you watch any of the reality TV series of the RealHousewives hosted on Bravo?  If you do and you have followed any of the “story lines” (and I quote that because they are nothing but stories with very little if any real reality) you can already guess the connection with sales copy.

 

Long gone are the days of heightened sales pitch – the 100% Guarantee followed by an outlandish claim like lose 10 pounds in 3 days!  Long gone are the days of the sale landing pages.  Let me explain why.

Photo from
http://www.melissagorga.com/ 

 

Teresa Giudice - Fraud Charges?

Melissa Gorga – Infidelity?

Caroline Manzo – Self-Righteous and Self-Serving?

         

Attribution: Gina Hughes at
http://www.techiediva.com/ via
Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 Unported license

Vickie Gunvalson – Infidelity Hypocrite?

Tamara Barney Judge – Shit Stirring Liar?

Heather Dubrow – Self Righteous Pretentious Wannabe Headline Actor?

The one thing that Reality TV and Reality Stars present is a false reality – which has been the trend of sales copy; make it sound and look good - hook the sucker in, but when the purchase is made the receiver is sadly disappointed – let down knowing that they fell for some mumble jumble written in a sales copy script.

 

Reality is what sales when it comes to a product.  The RHW on Bravo gets viewers because of the reality claim – however, the smart person knows that it is just a word and that in fact there is very little reality in the package, instead a whole lot of hype.  Each character is a piece of sales copy selling you a product, show, lifestyle, etc.; yet each person in every RHW show never really puts all their cards on the table.  In fact, they even disguise the cards through various mediums with the help of doctors, camera lenses and the biggest – cuts and edits.

I think it was something I read that Vickie Gunvalson said – in the lines if the viewers saw every aspect of her life they would be bored – she does laundry, cleans house, cooks, and all the other mundane things true housewives do.  If we saw that though, we would be better able to make a full informed decision if rumors about Vickie were true… was she a bad wife?  Was she cheating on Don with Brooks while she was still married?  Did Don in fact cheat on Vickie?  Is she really jealous of Gretchen?  Is Brooks really the biggest douche bag that ever lived?  Plus the reality to all the claims made about the specific Housewives listed above.  We are left to assume and make our own judgment call off of half facts.  We will never know the truth because – FACT:  The show is NOT reality.  Like sales copy you never really get the full story. 

The informed buyer wants the facts.  They want to know exactly what it is they are getting – not half-truths or worse yet, straight up false claims.   So if you are writing sales copy, keep it real!!  Actually make those who visit your landing page convert.  And then DON’T HIDE!!  By that I mean – do not make a landing page that does not allow a person to go back to your website to read more about you!  When you do this it is very similar to keeping a secret.  What are you trying to hide?  You should be proud of every product/service you sell so why all the secrecy? If you can’t give full disclosure right off the bat then something smells bad to me. 

So don’t write sales copy that is full of half-baked truths.  In addition, do not provide writers with less than the truth so the sales copy written for you converts to sales.  If you can’t keep it 100% then maybe you shouldn't be selling whatever it is you are selling. WOW!  What a concept!  Sell something through truth!