Great ads borrow desire, they don’t manufacture it
Every copywriting course tells you to lead with the benefit. The better direct-response writers go one step further: the benefit you lead with isn’t something you invent. It’s something you borrow from a desire your reader already has.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Creating desire from nothing is the hardest thing you can do in persuasion. Attaching your product to a desire that already exists is a completely different challenge, and a much more tractable one.
What the history shows
Conversion Rate Experts’ Copywriting Friday installment traces this principle across roughly a hundred years of advertising through five case studies: a heartbroken bridesmaid, a skinny man getting sand kicked in his face, a classic pianist silencing a room, a soap brand that told women they were beautiful, and a search box that fell in love.
Each example is built around a pre-existing human desire, not a manufactured one. The copy doesn’t try to install new wants into the reader. It finds the want that’s already there and connects the product to it.
The Dove angle is the clearest example
The beauty industry spent a century selling products through insecurity. Dove aimed at the same underlying desire (social approval and self-worth) but approached it from the opposite direction. Same desire, different angle of attack. That’s the move.
The operator takeaway
If your landing page, ad, or email isn’t converting, the first thing to audit isn’t your headline structure or your CTA color. It’s whether you’ve correctly identified the desire your reader showed up with. Write that desire down explicitly before you write a single word of copy. Then ask whether your headline borrows it or ignores it.
The examples in this piece are dated by design. Direct-response principles from a hundred years ago still drive conversion rate optimization today. That’s the point.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
With over 14 years in tech, marketing, and AI, including my role as Head of SEO at CitizenShipper and co-founder of TaleBot at Intale AI, I’m dedicated to sharing genuine, useful product insights and tips.
At BizStack, I aim to cut through the digital noise to provide clear, actionable advice.
And more than all else, I’m a father to a (always) little girl and a husband.
Contact me at [email protected] for assistance.
