conversational

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Two swimmers underwater

In this post I get to interview Giovanni Ciampaglia, Global Marketing Director for Arena Water Instinct.

Giovanni and I first worked together several years ago when he asked me to write some web pages for the fitness equipment company he was working for.

Recently he reached out to me and said, “I’m looking into ways to improve our marketing efforts through better (conversational) copywriting…”

He wanted to hire a freelancer who was trained in conversational copywriting, and I was happy to introduce him to several of our course alumni.

And then I got to thinking… of all the industries that might latch onto the power and promise of conversational copywriting… swimwear??

Hence this interview.

Let’s get started…

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Conversational chatbot

Yes, I really am working on the creation of my own chatbot.

And it’s a fascinating process.

Chatbots are driven by AI, or Machine Learning.

But this doesn’t mean a chatbot thinks like a human. It doesn’t. It doesn’t make up stuff on the fly either.

As the creator of the chatbot you have to anticipate and set up a whole bunch of possible interactions and “if/then” decision trees.

For example, imagine you’re trying to buy some hiking boots on a wilderness sports website.

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Scribbled marketing ideas
It’s getting harder and harder to figure out who can be trusted online.

Those friends or followers of yours on social media… are they real people or are they bots?

That news item you just read on Facebook… is it true or is it an out-and-out lie?

According to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer:

“Globally, nearly seven in 10 respondents among the general population worry about fake news or false information being used as a weapon, and 59 percent say that it is getting harder to tell if a piece of news was produced by a respected media organization.”

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A bad conversation

You think you’re having an open conversation with someone.

There’s some back and forth.

You have your say, and then he has his.

And then – dangit – you suddenly realize it’s one of THOSE conversations.

The other person isn’t really listening to you at all. He’s just waiting for the right moment to jump back in to push his own opinion.

While you’re talking, he’s essentially tuned out, marking time, and waiting for you to stop talking. He’s completely deaf to your side of the “conversation”.

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Recently I published a survey with some open-ended questions about Conversational Copywriting.

In particular, I wanted to know how I was doing.

Was I doing a decent job of explaining what Conversational Copywriting is all about?

These were open-ended questions, inviting people to say whatever they wanted.

Even so, one request came in as a strong number one…

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Arm wrestling to change someone's mind.

Back in the 1980s, I worked for an ad agency where we did a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies.

A significant part of our clients’ budgets went into the creation of the print materials their salespeople used when visiting doctors.

And the key focus of those materials was on how to overcome objections. Overcoming objections was core to the way these salespeople were trained. Identify the objections… take out the relevant products sheets or brochure… and then use that information to change the doctor’s mind.

The approach was essentially adversarial. The salespeople had to “overcome” objections. They had to fight for the sale. They had to close the sale.

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