Copywriting in Low-Trust Times

<img src="https://copywriterspodcast.com/images/banner/copywriterspodcast169.jpg" /> <br />I was watching TV last Sunday, and since we record a few episodes ahead, I was watching TV on the last Sunday of May.<br /> The show was “Meet the Press,” and it always starts with the announcer starting by pointing out that this is the longest-running show on TV. Of any show.<br /> From a marketing point of view, that’s an enviable place to be. Usually, when you’ve been on the air since 1947, that lasting power alone simply radiates trust. People tend to trust anything that’s been around a long time.<br /> So it really caught my attention when in the waning seconds of the show, the moderator, Chuck Todd, said something I’ve never heard him, or anyone else on TV, say before:<br /> “Thank you for trusting us.”<br /> The reason this caught my attention really doesn’t have much to do with Meet the Press, which is by far not one of my favorite shows, nor what it might have said about Chuck Todd, who, to be honest with you, is not my favorite TV personality.<br /> I was a little stunned by the words “thank you for trusting us” because I don’t think anyone in Chuck Todd’s position would utter words like that unless he, and a lot of very nervous people around him, were worried about keeping the trust of the viewing audience.<br /> And don’t think for a minute this rising tide of distrust is limited to that moderator, that show, or that TV network. It is widespread. It is, frankly, everywhere. And as a marketer and copywriter, this is something you need to be aware of and to adjust your marketing message to.<br /> I have handpicked three emotional triggers from my book Breakthrough Copywriting. I have never shared these three before, because, frankly, they are pretty intense.<br /> But I think they are good medicine for the distrust that ails us.<br /><br /> (first) Trigger 2: Empathy through shared misery<br /><br /> When people are hurting, scared or mistrustful, showing them that you know how they feel will bring down barriers