Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This was simultaneously one of my favorite and hardest interviews to do. I'm talking today with Leanna Patch from Punchline Copy. And if you have read most websites on the Internet, you know that most marketing copy sounds like it was written by a committee of lawyers. All Dresden Beige, probably confusing, certainly boring. Today I'm going to be exploring with Leanna how to use humor to break through the noise about why personality is the last true differentiator and how to walk the line between being funny and profitable without pissing off or alienating your audience. I'm super excited today to talk with Leanna Patch from Punchline Copy.
Hello again and welcome to Databeats Opinion. I am your host, Keith Perheck, founder of Segmetrics. And today I am here with Leanna Patch from Punchline Copy.
I've been very excited about this interview, Liana. Great to have you.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Oh, so excited to be here, Keith. And just so everyone knows, Keith was making fun of me before we started recording. Just.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: And it will not stop. It will not stop this.
I want to apologize to everyone in advance for if this interview goes off the rails because there is a 95%
[00:01:15] Speaker B: chance that it's going to be driving
[00:01:16] Speaker A: that way off the rails.
So, Leah, can you give me a little bit of or give me them a little bit of background about who you are, what you do, and what your amazing talents are?
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Oh, man.
I used to say I'm a conversion copywriter specializing in using comedy to convert, but that's a lot of C words and I am also a C word. And now I mostly just say, like, I am a meat husk spinning through space and, you know, going through an existential crisis. But most of the time I'm writing funny copy for EE Commerce and SaaS.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: So does the meat husk thing really work well with. With clients? Is that how you introduce yourself on those things?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: I think it's probably hurting me. I should probably stop saying that.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Maybe. Yeah.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Okay, I'll work it.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So I have here actually on my, my interview sheet the. So you know a lot of people on our team, you have worked with a lot of our content marketers. And I won't name a very specific person that, that wrote some of these prep questions for me, but he wrote very specifically, you do funny copywriting. I think you should start us off with a joke, which is probably the meanest opening question I've ever seen.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, everybody loves being told, like, dance monkey, you're funny. Tell me a joke. Like the most ham fisted possible. No, it's great. I thought about it, and the only jokes I can ever remember are the ones that I learned when I was, like, 10. Like, joke jokes, not jokes that I wrote, which inappropriate for this podcast.
So, yeah, I will. Let's. Let's do a joke. It's a knock knock joke. Okay.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Oh, dear God.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: All right.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Okay, so you start.
But wait, you.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: You start. It's a knock knock joke.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's the joke. Knock, knock.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Who's there?
[00:03:02] Speaker A: That's the joke, right?
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Okay.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: It's also my favorite. It's also my favorite knock, knock joke.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Is it? You're the only other person. Okay. This is why I love and hate hanging out with Keith because he is very smart and he often knows the punchline, and that's irritating for me. Okay, Keith, let's try again. You might know this one too.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no.
Go ahead. Yes, go ahead, please.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Okay. Knock, knock.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Who's there?
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Dwayne.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Dwayne who?
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Dwayne the bathtub. I'm dwowning.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the first one was bad.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Okay, fine. What do you call a beautiful woman on.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Should I do my fake Conan o'? Brien? Say again?
[00:03:39] Speaker B: What do you call a beautiful woman on a trombonist's arm?
Oh, dear God. What a tattoo.
That one's from npr.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about something that people actually care about instead of our horrible knock knock jokes.
So the whole brand that you have is about humor in copy. Right. And essentially, like, destroying, burning in a fire, bad corporate speak, marketing copy, and making something that people actually enjoy.
So tell me a little bit about that. How does.
Where did that come from? How does that start? Like, what. What is. What inspired you to take your comedic talents into this direction rather than something else?
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Well, the year was 2015, and I was super burned out. I've been running my business for, like, seven years, and it turned out that I was mostly copy editing magazines, which I was very good at and really hated doing.
And I was doing improv, and I was doing stand up, and I loved that. And it felt like when I went back to my laptop, I had to, like, put on this little mask and, like, be a professional. And my company name at the time was the English Maven.
Yeah. Yep. Which evokes this, like, portly woman sort of, like, striding purposefully across the hallway. Anyway, I joined Joanna Weebs First Mastermind, the Copy Hackers Mastermind. And I was like, man, I really wish that I could combine what I'm doing with comedy. With what I'm doing with copy. And she was like, well, why can't you? And I was like, whoa, man.
And long story short, that's what I did. And it just felt so freeing to finally get to be my extremely weird self. Like, I'm not that weird. We're all weird, right? Like, I'm. I'm like, ew, I'm so quirky. I'm not a manic pixie dream girl. We're all weird. Sorry for cussing, but it was such a relief to not have to wear that mask anymore.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: And there's a lot of ways to unpack that. Not from a personality standpoint, but of a.
It has become so. I think marketing copy has become so safe in the last few years.
And just like, there's this, oh, we're just going to generate the bare minimum to get the value out. We don't want to ruffle feathers. We don't. And one of the big things about marketing is when everyone zigs, you want to zag, right? You want to stand out, you want to do the opposite.
And are you finding companies understanding that a little bit more?
How is that being received?
[00:06:17] Speaker B: I think the companies that understand it are the companies that always understood it. There's some industries where people are always going to go straight to the newest AI tool. And so especially in E commerce, barely any of my work is in E Comm. Anymore. Although I do have some people in my inbox that are like, hey, chatgpt still can't really be funny. It can do a lot of stuff and it can get copy to like, 85, 90% efficacy if you're. If you're okay with just like the boring, you know, boilerplate.
But there are still a lot of companies that understand that humor is like the last differentiator. Right?
Having a personality, having a fun brand is the one remaining thing that will help you stand out. Because everything else is now table stakes with customer research. With AI, like, everyone's doing the same stuff, everyone's saying the same stuff, and you can't get anything new from the AI most of the time. For now,
[00:07:11] Speaker A: AI has taken all over, and it's funnier than all of us. And I think you're correct because there's, you know, the.
The branding positioning used to have. Used to be to have a good story, and that really stood out was having a good story that you could tell and you could lead people through that.
But it seems like everyone has a good story now, right? It became kind of old hat to have a good story.
Even if you don't have a good story, you can make one up. Not fully make one up, but you can reposition whatever you want to have a good story.
But I feel like humor in something is something that stands out, that you can't just turn on like a faucet because AI can't do it. And it's hard, and it is a balancing act between humor, clarity, and brand.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard and it's scary. And that's why a lot of people are like, no, we can't possibly do that, because they think of humor as this binary, like an on, off, switch. You're either not funny at all, or you're like cards against humanity, calling your customers idiots and making holocaust jokes.
And, like, I would like to propose that it's a spectrum, right? And you can just be a little bit warmer and funnier and then a little bit zanier and edgier and then a little bit more absurd and crazy. And then you get to cards against humanity, and you really have to earn that right. And as you do that, you narrow the scope of your addressable market and you ramp up how much they love you. And they would die for you. Right. Like, nobody's gonna die for McKinsey. Right. But people would die for cards against humanity. Some people would die for Old Spice. It's right there in the middle.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: So how do you.
When you're working with a client and working out that balance, do you bring up the spectrum chart? It's like, here's Ryan Reynolds. Here's Old Spice.
Here's Cards against humanity. Where do we fall on this spectrum? How do you lead people into this decision of how funny can I be? How much am I going to lean into this? And then making it part of the company culture.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I ask, what do you find funny? If I'm working directly with a founder, if I'm working with a team, it's like, okay, what is the culture around humor? What kind of gifs and memes are being shared? What kind of shows are being referenced? Like, how old is the team? What kind of references really land with them? And where is the overlap of that with what the customers enjoy and their risk tolerance? Right. So it's the balancing act between what do customers enjoy and what's going to resonate with them, and where does that overlap with the team? So it feels authentic. And then, like, how risky do we want to get? How daring are we willing to be?
[00:09:47] Speaker A: When you're talking about the team, why do you feel that's important?
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Oh, Because I don't want to be the person who comes in, writes the copy and leaves. And then everyone's like, cool, we don't know how to do that. And then eventually it just sort of devolves back into boring corporate jargon, which happens a lot anyway. But especially if I'm working on a brand guide and sort of reverse engineering a copy project for a client, I like them to know what they are doing and why and how it's working so that when I leave, they have a structure to keep doing that thing.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: I fully agree with that. I think that is one of probably the challenges when someone thinks about bringing in someone like you, who is funny and it's like, oh, we're going to have all this great copy, but then what are we going to do? We can't keep Leanna on forever.
So we now have this. I mean, you can, but you can, but you now have this funny site that you can't be funny on anymore. Right. Or you have this funny initial branding of social and how you interact with people, but you're not funny enough to continue it. So I think that's, that's sometimes a challenge that people come into.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: You have to, you have to be really careful about that difference between like the forward facing copy and like how your customer service reps are actually replying to people, how social media people are actually replying. Because like I would say you have to commit to the bit. Like Wendy's is an example that's held up all the time on social media is like crazy. Right? Like, they commit. If you reply to Wendy's, they're not just automatically sliding back into like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry you had that experience. Please reach out at this link. You know, Dash, Sarah. Right. They just make fun of you because that's, they're living in that Persona.
Not every brand can do that. Not every brand wants to do that. And so when I work with businesses that are a little bit more cautious, a little bit more stayed, like we live more in that gentle, friendly, wholesome humor zone because it's less offensive, it's less risky and it's easier to do.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah. When I leave. So you can tell that humor is a little bit outside of my comfort zone because I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with some of the things to talk about. And, and I think that I am not alone in that. Right. And I think that is, you know, we were kind of talking before the call that, you know, when people are around a funny person, everyone thinks they're funny and they try to be funny and it's usually just very cringe. And it is.
I think that there is a.
It's like people who say that they can't draw, right? It's like oh, I can draw, I can't draw, oh I'm funny, I'm not funny kind of thing.
And I think that there is a huge mental hurdle that has to be overcome there.
Where do you see that hurdle? Because let's say that someone does want to bring in humor and be real and be engaging with their customers, but then they do need to bring that into the product, into the customer support, into the everything. Because you can't just have a funny website.
You can't just have a funny social media. You have to. Or maybe not do you have to embed that into every piece of your product and into what you are doing? Right. Like we have this really funny marketing copy but we sell literally blank pieces of paper in reams of 100 and that's all we sell. Like is
[00:13:19] Speaker B: right. And. And that has to be your differentiator, right? I mean the song that I am singing all the time, Keith is like make sure your entire marketing ecosystem is cohesive and like has the same voice. There are plenty of brands, especially in E commerce that put so much effort into the upfront, like top of Funnel and then you buy from them and you get the like templated shopify, order confirmation email and it just feels like being slapped in the face because you're like oh, you got my money and now you don't care anymore. You don't even care about retention. Right? There's no like long tail post purchase follow up sequence that I'm going to get. That's going to like re engage me and keep me excited. You're going to roll me into the newsletter which is just a list of things to buy.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: You actually just hit one of my trigger points which is ecom follow up are patently some of the worst follow up if they ever do it at all on the planet. And it's so ripe for repeat purchase and it's so ripe for continuing that branding and continuing that engagement to get people really effing exc about what it is they're buying and about that brand and to purchase again or recommend it to other people. Like yeah, there's so much care in the beginning to get your money and then they drop you like a hot potato.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I hate that.
That is my favorite thing to be hired for is to fix that problem.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: What do you do there. So, and let's. Let's clarify a little bit that a lot of these e comm shops are dropshippers, right? They don't. They want that brand, they want that standout. And then they really don't care. Do they? Do they care?
[00:14:58] Speaker B: I mean, one of my metrics is like, I want to work with brands and companies that actually care. And so, like, if it's very clear to me that you make a shitty product or that you are a shitty company, like, luckily, I can say probably not a fit. They're not really in my inbox anyway. They're like, why would we pay for copy? We have Claude and it's like, okay, Clawd and Chatgpt. For the record, right now, my impression of them is that they are very good at writing what at first glance might look like a joke. It has the shape of a joke. Like, it's the outside shell of a joke. And then you. If you think about it, there's like no punchline and it's actually. There's nothing funny there.
They know the cadence, but they don't know the substance. So far.
Yeah, I. I like to start with the structure. So, like, it is conversion comedy, right? Starts foremost with what touch points do we need to hit without being funny?
When do we want to follow up, what do we want to say?
And then how do we add the brand or the humor back into those touch points one by one? So it's never just like, funny for the sake of funny, which is the quickest way to piss people off and why you have to be really ruthless when you're editing.
I have killed many a darling in my copy because there's just too many jokes per paragraph, and that distracts from conversion. Right.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Okay, so this is something fascinating that you brought up, which was you are looking at the touch points of that messaging and that marketing and that thing without being funny. Right? So what are the things you want to hit? So how are you then building out those touch points and saying, okay, these are the things we want to hit. These are the places we want to focus on. And then this is good to put in comedy. This is not good to put in comedy. Is it feeling? Is it? That's the magic sense that Lyanna brings.
What's the overarching?
[00:16:49] Speaker B: I want to say it's the magic sense that Liene brings. But I have done a lot of work reverse engineering this and figuring out how exactly I do it.
And I think it's like an art and science. Right. So we figure out what kind of jokes we're going to be making depending on the style of humor of the brand.
Most brands are going for that sort of wholesome and goofy humor characterized by animal gifts, cute babies, people falling down but not getting hurt. Right? That very universal, wholesome sense of humor.
So if we're doing that, we're going through.
And I'm looking for. And often I read the copy out loud, looking for any spot where I might be able to have a conversation with the copy or if it's like, asking for something more.
Or I'm looking for spots where someone might be anxious, bored, have a question, or be skeptical. And that's probably a good time to insert, like a parenthetical aside that's like, we know you're wondering, and if I'm inserting a parenthetical aside in mine, I might as well end with a joke, right? So we know you're wondering about X and Y and also a joke about the founder or whatever to just lighten the mood and release that tension.
So when I started doing this, I, you know, I live in imposter syndrome world.
And so even though it's been like eight, seven to eight years since I started doing this, I still lean heavily on the psychology of it. And, like, humor has been proven time and time again to reduce anxiety, boost information recall, build stronger and more durable relationships. Like, there are so many cognitive, emotional, and social functions of humor that we use every day.
And so, like, you can boil it down to just be more human as a brand, but that's really what we're doing, right? And so adding that room in the copy for fun and then saying, is it distracting? Should I cut a little bit? Like, maybe we don't need this joke. Or, like, one gif per email. My rule of thumb is, like, no more than one joke per paragraph usually for most clients.
And then I get the odd client that's like, go absolutely balls to the wall. And I'm like, yes, marry me.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Does that, does that work? Does just a constant string of not non sequitur, but jokes and humor and dear Lord, what is going on in this email is. I mean, obviously it would stand out.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: I mean, I think it works. There's a lot of the brands that are doing that are at the far end of that humor spectrum, right? So, like, cards against humanity. Pit viper is another one. They make sunglasses. Their whole website is like a Windows 95 desktop. And, like, buttons are flat. And like, they.
It's not just copy at that point, right? They lean hard into all these stunts that they're doing, like, cards against humanity. Does a stunt every year for Black Friday. One year they shipped people actual.
Another year they said, give us money and we'll dig a hole until we run out of money to stop digging the hole.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: You remember the hole, like, a mile down.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: One year, you could own an Irish cat.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: It was a huge hole.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Mile seems large, but it was a huge hole.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: It was really.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: They bought an island.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Then they filled it back in. They're like. They dug, like, $17,000 worth of hole. And then they were like, all right, fill it back up, boys.
Which I just love.
So you, like. You start to embody that. That absurdity. That's where the absurdity, like, absurdity is a style of humor that is characterized by things not having a resolution. If you want to get really into humor theory, we can do that.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: I would like to get into the humor theory, especially as it relates to. To.
I hate to say, and conversion and product, but it's. It's really like, how does humor theory and how does humor work on a psychological level? Because that's what marketing is at the end of the day. Right. It's creating a connection with someone.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah. One way that I sometimes think about it is like, okay, my blank piece of paper, my empty document is a stage, right. And I am performing. The copy is performing. You don't want any wasted moments on the stage. And. And you sometimes as, like a standup, you have context. You're telling a story. You're not actually making a joke, but you have the audience riding along. And then you hit the punchline. You get the payoff. You do the little tag at the end of it, you move on. Like, there's this sort of ebb and flow kind of ride that you're taking people on with both standup and copy.
And so that's. That's, like, one metaphor I like to apply.
Let's not waste any time.
Let's cut down to the meat only. And both of those things work for effective conversion. Copywriting and comedy.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Does that make sense? I'm, like, very excited about this stuff. And so I really found, like, do you get it? Do you love it?
[00:21:26] Speaker A: So.
And I think you are. I mean, I know you're completely correct on that, which is the. The tightness of it. The.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: The.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: The snappiness of it almost. Right. Like, especially. I mean, yeah. In all marketing copy, it is broad brevity that is converting. No one's going to read. And my tendency is to write long, rambling Paragraphs. Not a great thing for marketing copy.
I think I just like to hear the sound of my own voice. But in marketing copy, shorter is better. And then in comedy, if you are going on this huge, long description, you're not going to ever get them there.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Although, Although, devil's advocate, if you go on long enough, it starts to become ridiculous that you've gone on for so long. And that in itself is funny. And that also lives in that, like, absurdity nonsense.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Like a shaggy dog story.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: So, like, yes, exactly. Shaggy dog story. I always forget that term. I never, I didn't grow up with it. And many people have said that to me and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's. That's what it's called. Yeah. So it becomes absurd and then it returns to, you know, I'm just waiting for this to end.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: How does that work in marketing copy, though? Because that's. I mean, I, I love a good shaggy dog story.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: They're.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: They are just Chef's kiss. But how does that work in copy? Right.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Like, I think you have to earn it. And I think it has to be very clear that you're doing this as a stunt. So, like, it could, it could live in a standalone email. And it, like, has to be very clear from the beginning that that's what you're doing because otherwise people will just get weirded out and leave before they know.
Um, I. I think if you're doing it on a website, maybe design plays a part. So, like, how do we have a high converting, you know, product page or landing page that still has opportunities to tell a really long story, like maybe in an accordion or like, this photo caption is weirdly long. Or if I hover, something happens. I love Easter eggs and I love rewarding people for reading closely. And so I'm always like, put most of your jokes in the body copy. Hide jokes in the captions. Like, let's put Easter eggs everywhere you. Because. And this is like, this is where I have evolved. After several years of soul searching and mental breakdown, I'm just like, things are so bad. We're all going to die. We need joy. It is imperative. Joy is an imperative. Like, please, God, be funny, because what the fuck are we doing here? But nobody.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: You have to just package that a little bit in a little bit of a nicer shell.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: I can't.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: But how does that gel with people? And I see this with myself. People on the Internet just don't read anymore. They skim. So how does that gel with the attention span on the sites? Right. Like, is it the hook?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: I disagree that people don't read. I think if you give them a reason to read, if you make it compelling enough, they will read. They won't have a choice.
It's just that most people write copy with design first and designers tend to create templates with almost no room for copy. And so then if you have longer copy, it's like, why did you ruin the template? Why did you ruin the design? It's like, because you should write the copy first and then design rather.
There are plenty of high, converting, high traffic landing pages that are still doing this, like either funny approach or direct response, like VSL video sales letter that goes on and on and on and you're telling a story and you're asking, you know, and it's, it still works. That's why we still remember.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: One of Ramit Sadie's sales pages that we worked on was 64 pages, I think when you printed it out. And we had a heat map and people would read for the good, probably a good 10 minutes before you could start to see the scrolling faster and faster. And then there was this one picture of a woman with blue hair.
And the heat map just stops right there. And so it's just like, okay, I'm interested. I'm just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And then as soon as they hit that picture, they're like, I'm back and interested again. And then it just started like the heat map started over again. It was fascinating because, I mean, it stood out as you're scrolling through this 64 page document of text and then suddenly there's a testimonial woman with blue hair. And then that's where, that's where everyone stopped and started reading again.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: I thought you were going to say that's where they dropped off because blue hair is so politicized now. Like, like they don't, they don't agree with our politics.
Yeah. Before all of that. Yeah. He is a great example and I think it works so well because what he is really selling with all of his programs and his wisdom is transformation. Right. And that's pretty much what we're all selling. We're selling the promise that your life will get better in some measurable, tangible way. He's just a little bit closer to that promise because he's like, I'm going to help you make more money. Money is great. We all agree, right? I'm going to help you change your psychology around money so you feel good about money. That's a very concise promise. It's harder to get there when it's like, I'm selling you a six foot by six foot squishmallow. For me, that's the benefit is obvious. I'm just like a friend, a friend that never leaves me.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: And I think it helps. And you can see as he went on his journey of building the business and the product and everything, he found that strong personality and that humor because he was always. He's always been very.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Very strong in his opinions and very damning in his humor. Like, he just has this dry witness that is so good. And he just doesn't give a crap about cushioning things. Right. He's very direct with it. And I really feel like once he leaned into that, that's when a lot of his copy started exploding. That's when his social exploded.
And it really is having that strong personality we were talking about standing out and that. I think. I don't. I think it's much harder to stand out on product when you are in a sea of similar products.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. If everything is table stakes. I will also say that Ramit has softened a lot over the years as his audience has grown and broadened. And that's something that I often see too. Like brands that I work with, if they blow up, they start to walk back some of the edgier humor, which is fine. And that's their choice. Right. Like, there's still plenty of room for those little pieces of humor that remain to hit hard.
But I have noticed this shift. Like, as you scale, you, you go, you retreat toward the safe zones a little bit more.
But every now and then you'll see like a really punchy joke in one of Ramitz emails and you'd be like,
[00:28:19] Speaker A: do you think that's a business side or do you think that's a personality side? As you get older and more mellow versus a business side of, oh, now we have. And maybe it's not.
It's not on purpose, but, oh, now we have all these different verticals that we don't want to alienate any of them.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: I am only guessing, and I think it's both. Like, if you have listened to his podcast from the beginning, you can hear how he's done a lot of therapy. He starts recommending therapy more, he softens a little bit. And I think as you age, you soften and you start to give more benefit of the doubt, hopefully to other people. So I think it's that. But I also do think it's. It could be a calculated move to, like, be more appealing, get People bought in. But then again, he's still making a bunch of TikToks with strong opinions because that's what gets attention. Right?
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about.
We've talked about, like, how copy and how humor fits into this thing.
One of the things that I have always found during marketing is the things that happen that you don't expect, right? The copy, the marketing strategy, the whatever. Can you talk about some things that you've brought in with humor or with the copy or with strategy that we're like, this will never work and it kicks butt. Or like, you're like, oh, this is going to do great, and it's just falls completely flat for a reason you didn't think of or anything like that.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: I try not to work with anyone who is not bought into the idea that it's worth trying.
I do remember one time I wrote a blog where I made a joke about Chernobyl and somebody with a Russian name was like, that's not funny. And I was like, it's been a long. I'm sorry. It's been a long time. Okay, I'm sorry, Alexander. Like, that's my bad.
So there, you know, you'll always find the edge and people will let you know.
And that. That polarization is the risk you take. Like, the edgier you want to get, the more you will divide people. And like we said, the deeper you will build your fandom, the more raving fans you will have.
Once I wrote a landing page for a repeat client that went through that sort of, like, used humor to differentiate itself at first, grew bigger, scaled, started working with bigger companies, toned it down a little bit, and then they came back to me and they were like, okay, we want to be funny again, but just on this landing page.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: We're doing it just on this landing page. We only want to be funny in this very narrow.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Well, like, they're driving traffic to this new domain they've bought, right? And so, like, great. And they came up with the concept themselves, and I loved it. And I don't want to name them because the design was and continues to be absolutely atrocious, like, to the point where it is hard to read the copy. That's how bad the design is. And so that page didn't convert. And I'm like, I'm not going to take the blame on this one. I really think this is on you.
But I did get to write a button that. So it's a tool that gets rid of spreadsheets. I did write My favorite button of all time. That said, every time you click this button, God kills a spreadsheet. And then underneath it, it said, operators are standing by to take your spreadsheets out behind.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: I actually remember that I know exactly who that is, and I remember that it's a sales page. It was great.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: It was wonderful. Yeah.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So this. This brings. This brings up a really good point, though, which is. And I think that all marketers have this, is that there's always a balance between the copy, the design, the implementation, and the product. Right.
And none of these live on their own.
How do you measure that? How do you look at, oh, humor is the linchpin here. Or, okay, we brought in humor, but it didn't explain the product well enough. Like, how do you start refining that once you've built that?
[00:32:05] Speaker B: The first question you're asking is, how do you know that humor is the opportunity? Which is a great question. And I would say, you know, humor is the opportunity when your copy and design are working well together and the copy is converting, and now you want to see if it can convert higher with humor. So, like, if you've checked all your boxes in terms of design, presentation, traffic, like benchmarking, like, you're good, the copy is well written, humor is the next available spot. And then I totally forgot the second part of your question.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: I think it was because I can't. I mean, it was, how do you start measuring that? So. But what you're saying is that you would start with. You don't.
You don't. Let me. Let me see if I'm trying to phrase this correctly, is that humor would not be the first thing you would bring in for a new product. Is what you're saying you want to know a baseline? I mean, for you.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Yes.
Yeah.
In a perfect world for my, you know, for writing more case studies, which I never do because I never follow up with clients because I'm the worst.
But sometimes they reach out. They're like, hey, it worked. I'm like, oh, that's great. That's good to know.
There would be. Yes, there would be a benchmark with, like, normal copy. Right. And then we would be able to say, the humor test performed 12 to 25% better. In one of my landmark projects, it performed 96% better in terms of conversions and 200% better in terms of add to cart. So there's that.
But most of the time, companies are already aware that humor has to be the differentiator, because, again, they're selling a commodity product and they're like, we know that brand is our edge and we're going to invest in brand. And so they're like right out of the gate we want to be really funny. So humor becomes the baseline.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Do you talk with a lot of people who they, they don't know what the differentiator. So they are in a industry or they have a product that is competitive and they are, they are focused in brand, in the old way of thinking of brand, right? Like we're going to have, we're going to have colors, we're going to position ourselves as the better product, blah blah blah. But it's not a personality based brand.
But they come to you because they're like, we need something, we need some brand. We're not sure where to go with this. Is that something that you then lead them towards, humor? Do those people just not come to you because they're like, she's the funny girl.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: They come to me sometimes and sometimes I send them to another copywriter who specializes in brand voice because he is really good at codifying that.
And sometimes I'll write a voice guide for them after a project.
But I think especially as Gen Z takes the reins, like they inherently understand the importance of personality in brand. Like maybe I'm just way too deep in the marketing world, but I feel like most people know that brand is not just your logo and your palette and your fonts, right? Like brand is this ineffable ethos that your company somehow has and if you don't create it, it creates itself usually badly.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: I would actually go one step further and I would say that most people think of brand as the personality of the company more so than they think of it. The logo, I think, yeah, I think the idea of the logo and the font and all that, that is a very kind of corporate and getting older and not as standardized idea of brand. Now when you think of, you know, we brought up Wendy's, Wendy's brand.
It's a very like I'm not thinking of the logo, I'm thinking of their social media. I'm thinking of the commercials that they bring out and I'm not thinking about the font and I'm thinking about the style that Mint Mobile. I swear to God, I watch every single Mint Mobile ad when they pop up because Ryan Reynolds is just really effing funny. And every ad is clever, right? And that's the brand. So when someone says Mint Mobile, I don't think of the products they have, I don't think of anything that they're doing. I Think of Ryan Reynolds is effing funny, right?
[00:36:02] Speaker B: And they did an amazing job sort of upscaling, because Mint Mobile, when I. I remember back in the day when, like, Mint Mobile became a thing, it was like, oh, pay as you go, cell phones, like, for the pores.
Please don't cancel me.
It had this really, like, sort of grungy, you know, vibe around it. And then they were like, let us borrow the golden halo of this celebrity and lean into his sense of humor. And now it's like everybody's favorite.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, we're talking about when is the right time to bring humor. But I think it's when is the right time to bring in brand?
Even, like, do you find. Because you have much more experience with the branding side than I do.
Do people start with brand? Do they start with, oh, I want to have this type of thing? Or it's usually the product. And then brand is a secondary thought. Like, here's a great question. How do you help a company bring out the inner brand in them? Not necessarily, oh, this is the Liana copy, or this is a Leanna humor. But what is that overarching brand?
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
That is a concern for people. They're like, well, I don't want to sound just like you. And I'm like, my goal is that you sound like you. Right. Although there will be a little bit of me in it, just like there's a little bit of you and Ryan Reynolds.
I find that more and more nowadays, people are coming to me at the beginning of launching a company.
They used to. It used to be mostly like, okay, we're established. We're doing, you know, X number of sales a month, and now we want to try humor. And now it's like, we are preparing. We're on the front end. We haven't launched yet. We're months or years from launching, and we want you to bring us out of the gate strong with funny copy or funny.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: There was one other piece of that question that you asked that I was going to the.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: The piece of finding the brand.
Like, finding that voice.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So finding the voice. My favorite question of all time to ask, which invariably leads to this look on a prospect's face which is just like, oh, oh. And they say, oh, I never thought. That's a good question. My favorite question is, how do you want this copy to make the reader feel?
Because most of humor copy is about feelings, Right? Conversion is about feelings. Direct response is about feelings and kind of making people feel shitty, which I try not to do so how do you want to make them feel? Puts you immediately back in the passenger seat, right? Like your customer, who am I, what am I feeling? If I'm interested in this brand, who am I and what am I feeling? And that's a weird question that gets left out of the customer research a lot.
Like, how do you want this to make.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: This is interesting because it kind of ties back to pain Dream Fix. Right? And pain dream fix for people don't know. It's. I don't know. And my question is, is this still really strong or is it kind of overused? Which is you show the pain that your product solves. You show what it looks like if you've solved that problem and then the fix is the product. Right.
It became really popular about eight, ten years ago, I guess maybe a little bit more.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Do you mentioned that you don't like writing the.
Hey, it's all crap. Hey, like denigrating the audience, do you find that pain dream fix has turned into that to a degree. Do you feel like Pain dream fix is still a.
Because when I think of branding and when I. When you ask that question of what do you think?
How do you want people to feel? My mind instantly went to pain dream Fix. So is that still something that is valid or is it so overused that it's like, okay, everyone's doing this now.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: I think it's still valid. And the way that I try to do it is with specificity and with leaning on that customer research. So we can actually say, hey, I know you're having trouble with these exact problems. Make a few jokes about those problems to show that we're right there with them. And then, hey, you know, you could keep going the way you are. This is the. Another copywriting formula, right? Pain agitate solution.
So like the problem, we make it so much worse. It's so unbearable. And then we say, congrats, we can fix it.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: I love that you took it more negative. It's like pain dream fix, at least it's like you have a pain, but you can have it. And here's the solution. You're like, here's the pain.
Let's just stick that pin in a little bit more. Let's poke you a little bit more where it hurts, and then we'll show you the solution.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Well, different formulas work for different products with different levels of complexity, right? So if you're selling something that's an impulse buy, you might not need a formula at all. It's just like, hey, this is delightful. I think it's cool. I'm going to buy it. If it's like a seventeen hundred dollar mattress, then there's a lot more going on in the page to sort of stair step people through those stages of awareness really is what we're doing. Shout out to Eugene Schwartz.
But yeah, I. So when I'm writing an agitation section, the agitation section is about like what will happen if you don't fix this.
And again, it's more important for higher dollar products or like software solutions, for example. Like, and we don't have to, we don't have to go too far in that direction because that for me is like a warning bell for very scammy direct response copy. Like, yeah, you know, you could keep doing it the way you are, you piece of shit. And then your wife will leave you and your dog will die. Your team will quit and like, you know, like, okay, all right. I sort of like leave it up to them, right? So like.
And that is where the dream comes in, right? You can, you can with this solution. Your life will be amazing without it. It will be so bad. That's why we see those with and without comparison sections a lot.
But I'm not trying to ever make somebody feel like less than as a person for not buying. Right? Because maybe they'll come back.
That's why I hate those pop ups that are like, would you like 10% off? And then the no copy is no thanks, I hate saving.
Fuck you, I'm never going back.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: I think this is the. And I don't envy your position in this, but I feel like this is the balancing game that humor and marketing copy really has to balance. Which is, is it cute and funny or is it going to just piss people off? Right? Because there is a world where it's like, oh yeah, that was cute the first time I saw it 15 years ago. But then everyone started copying it and it ain't cute anymore, right?
[00:42:30] Speaker B: I was going to say this is an important part of writing funny copy is being on top of or in the zeitgeist. Like you have to know which of those things are played out. Like the famous CD baby email, right? The order confirmation.
When we saw your order come in, everybody celebrated. We rang the bell, there was confetti. We went and took your CD off the shelf on a velvet pillow. Like that was amazing when Derek Sivers wrote that and then everybody else copied it. And now it's like I was talking
[00:42:55] Speaker A: with Brendan Dunn on one of the.
On interview we were doing and we were talking about the first time I ever saw, you know, everyone said, hey, first name. And it had the macro in the email that would show your name, right? And he was the first email I ever saw where he put it in the body copy as well. And he was telling a story and it's like. And imagine you're at a party and someone comes up to you and says, hey, Keith. And it's just tech wise, I know exactly what's going on. But it blew my mind. I'm like, oh, you can do that. And then everyone's doing it.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Kind of blows my mind.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Especially with AI now, right? Like it's just auto filled out and it's like, eh, okay. Like, I don't.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Dynamic variables are so crazy. Somebody sent me a cold email the other day and it was like, hey, Leanne, I hope the weather in Austin is treating you well. And I was like, oh, this is real. No, it's not.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Any time it's talking about the weather or something nearby. My, my least favorite one. And we might get into this AI stuff on this conversation, but I had one reach out to me and it's like, hey, I was in Portland last week and I went to the food carts downtown and they were great. And those food carts were destroyed six years ago to build a Ritz Carlton. And everyone in Portland is still pissed off about it. And so it's like, a, you're a liar. B, you're an sop.
Don't bring that up.
I did not.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Are you like, I know you're lying and I hate you.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: I'll be on Twitter and like some slack chats and stuff like that. It was just so, so I was so peeved.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, it's so disingenuous. And this is like in SaaS Marketing Gym, we are advising founders on how to send cold email. And often I, I default toward like, hey, yes, it's a cold email. I'm so sorry. It is actually relevant, I hope. And if it's not, you know, feel free to forward me directly to spam and consider, you know, imagine punching me in the face repeatedly. Or like some humor, right? To lighten, to self deprecate. That's another hugely helpful humor technique. The two topics that I often recommend making fun of. For brands that are just starting to experiment with humor, there's observational humor, which is where we make fun of something that's out there that we can both see that we agree on. I'm not making fun of you. I'm not making fun of me. It's safe, right? So like Jerry Seinfeld, what's the deal with airplane food? Yeah.
And then there's self deprecation, which is like, for the most part, no one can get mad at you for making fun of yourself. You do have to be very careful not to step on the line of like, oh, now it's uncomfortable because you're making too much fun of yourself. And I'm starting to agree.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: I find self deprecating humor to be one of the, I won't say the best forms of humor, but it's a very great sense of humor, especially for getting people to relate to you.
Conan o' Brien is honestly one of my favorite comedians and his sense of self deprecating humor is so good. And it didn't, it really hit me the most when. So he does the travel show, right? And he went to Japan and Korea and all these places. And when he went to Japan and a lot of comedians and stuff go to Japan and the entire bit is them making fun of Japan. That's all it is. They are making fun of the culture, they're making fun of the people they're making fun of. Like, oh, I'm like, this is so different than what I have in my country. Blah, blah, right? And when Conan went, and I watched Conan's, I was like, this is going to be horrible. He's always pissed me off. And the entire thing was him treating himself as the outsider, as the idiot in this culture because he didn't understand it. And I was like, it was hilarious. And he went right up to that line of like, where everyone else goes. But he always kept it on. I am the idiot. I am the one who's failing here. And it was so good and so funny the entire time because he's not making fun. He's not punching down. He's always either punching up or punching himself in the face, right?
[00:46:49] Speaker B: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is again, such a good note. Like, the reason we get uncomfortable with humor when it punches down is because there's an, there's an implied status, right? And if you have more power, more money, more reach than whoever you're making fun of, it just feels like you're being a bully. But it's very funny when we punch up. You know, it is a time honored tradition of journalists and political cartoonists how we speak truth to power by making fun of power.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: So you mentioned SaaS Marketing Gym. What is SaaS Marketing Gym?
[00:47:21] Speaker B: Oh, I'm so glad you asked.
SaaS Marketing Gym is a cohort based program that I Run with Colleen Schnetler. And we take eight founders for three months at a time and we meet with them almost every day for an hour and a half. And we make them do marketing stuff for their business. And we start by building them a custom marketing plan for those three months and then we tweak as we go. And so basically we're just making people show up, fix their website, copy, write their onboarding emails, post on LinkedIn, do cold outreach. All the stuff that they would put off forever if they could because they're like, I just want to do my bleep loops and you know, build my stuff.
We're like, no, you actually have to sell things.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: So it's essentially like a personal trainer for marketing.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Yes.
And accountability. And there is actually, and this is so wholesome and heartening, we've discovered there's a lot of like peer support. And so we have a slack. And this is, we're doing a third cohort now and everybody from the past two courts cohorts are in the slack. And like people will comment, people will boost each other's posts on the calls, people will share their experience with, you know, this and that tactic or wording or whatever they're doing. And so sometimes Colleen and I just get to sit back and be like, look at them go.
And they're like, why are you in pan?
[00:48:31] Speaker A: Are these mainly like solo founders? Are they mainly the marketing teams at companies? Like, what's kind of the demographic of people going? I mean this, this is fascinating to me because accountability has always been a high part of what I. But yeah, I haven't found many marketing accountability places like this.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah, weirdly, it runs the gamut. We have people who are pre launch and pre revenue. We have people who are just starting. We have people who are like at I think 10 to 20 k. Mrr. We had one person in the cohort who runs a multi person $10 million a year business who never came. But he was like, I love this. And then he never showed up. We were like, what do you love about it? Exactly. We're still talking him like he wanted, he wanted a custom version of the program. So I was like, all right, we could. This is not the model you're looking for, but maybe we can build it
[00:49:21] Speaker A: sounds like it's mainly the founders coming in.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: It is mainly the founders. Yes. Some. That one person sent his marketing team every now and then. But it's hard because you need the one person to have buy in and there needs to be that continuity of like, what are we working on?
So, yeah, usually it's founder led marketing. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: So, Liana, it has been absolutely wonderful having you on. Where can people find you on the Internet?
[00:49:44] Speaker B: Oh, screaming about stuff on Bluesky because I left Twitter. And also@punchlinecopy.com and SaaS marketing gym.com we
[00:49:53] Speaker A: will put those links in the, in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining me.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: Thank you so much for letting me shriek at you over Zoom.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: We, we did cut the shrieking out. It was honestly like seven minutes of just sustained screeching.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: If you want the bonus shrieking, put your email below and we'll, we'll send it right to your phone.
[00:50:14] Speaker A: We'll put a, we'll put an email address that you can email asking for the shrieking and send this out.
Leanna, thank you so much.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: Thanks, Ken.
