Empower Your Writing with NewView Options–Part II

By Bill Drew - May 30 , 2008

Last week in Part I, I covered the basics of the NewView approach to writing and introduced you to the NewView Empowering Grid.

This week, let’s take a look at how the NewView Empowering Grid can help us write an ad.

Here’s a business situation: Harper’s Cabinets in Birmingham, Alabama, sells great cabinets at thrifty prices. They need advertising ideas—they’re not sure just what—for the marketing push they want to make so they can expand soon.

In using the NewView Empowering Grid, make sure you’ve got the blank at the top and those at the left side already filled with OldView information before you start supplying NewViews in the empty squares. So at the top you could put—

OLDVIEW: Cabinets are very useful and can add style to any home

In the blanks to the left of the grid, you can identify all the familiar features and benefits that customers expect about cabinets, including Harper’s, like this:

· Values—quality materials, elegant, inexpensive, easily installed, trusted

· Experiences— customer testimonials; quick & clean installation/delivery

· Expectations—last long, resist damage, friends will admire

· Reasoning—have need, can afford it, & guaranteed, so buy the bargain

· Language—familiar & standard vocabulary, font, grammar

You’ll be surprised at how much more quickly NewView ideas will pop out at you once the OldViews are on paper in that left column. It frees your mind up, believe me! And don’t be too particular about what you write down for your first reactions in the empty squares. As with other brainstorming techniques, the big idea is just to get something written down, without being too critical—you can make modifications at any time. Most importantly, never forget this timeless and true adage, “Good writing is ALWAYS the result of rewriting.”

To demonstrate how you could fill in the empty NewView Option squares for each row, left to right, here are some possible NewViews to enter for the Values row:

· Reverse: all that quality plus such low/reasonable costs—naw, can’t be true

· Add: lasts longer (your grandkids will grow up with them) & WAY more stylish

· Subtract: 2/3s cost of competitors; no install charge; guaranteed—no worries

· Substitute: show your kids the quality & get them to buy for you

· Reorganize: priorities—don’t go on vacation, add lasting value to your house

Here’s how all that looks in the NewView Empowering Grid —–

By Reversing some OldView Values, we created a NewView. With that, we can imagine a TV or radio spot in which a man and his minister have just heard all the features and benefits about Harper’s Cabinets, and the man turns to his minister and says, “Reverend, that’s all just too good to be true, isn’t it?” The minister replies, “Well, son, I had Harper’s Cabinets installed a year ago, and I can tell you that everything we’ve just heard is true—at least in my experience.” The man replies, “Wow! Wait ‘til I tell Melanie!” End of commercial. Cha-ching!

With OldView, NewView Options, and NewView, you can analyze the content of your own writing more clearly and then improve it, as well as recognize and understand different kinds of newness in any writing (in fact, in any sort of communication). Remember, any features/benefits of your product/service that are meaningful and new—the NewView—have to be linked to familiar, old, or shared material—the OldView, made up of Values, Experiences, Expectations, Reasoning, Language—that is already meaningful to or valued by the audience/customer. How linked? With one or more of the NewView Options—by Reversing, Adding to, Subtracting from, Substituting for, or Reorganizing the keywords and key concepts of the OldView material.

By using the NewView Empowering Grid, as we did above, you can tweak OldViews with NewView Options to create interesting, attention-grabbing and interest-holding NewView content for your advertisements. You can surprise Broca more frequently and more reliably with NewView, now that you know what important OldView categories to focus on and how to direct that focus with NewView Options.

As Yoda says—“Burn images into minds, you should, with laser precision. Stimulate sales, you could, and watch company bank bags ballooning, you would.”

Right on, Yoda!

(When did you say you wanted those new cabinets installed?)

Next week, in Part III, I’ll show you how to use the NewView Empowering Grid to create promotions for your book. So stay tuned  for Part III.

Copyright ( C ) 2008 by William R. Drew Jr. All Rights Reserved.