“Hi, my name is Roy — and this is a monkey. And in just a minute, you’ll discover exactly how YOU can double your sales results from your current advertising. Thanks to an unexpected lesson from this monkey — about the very first thing you must do in every ad you run…”
Remember the rash of promos of that hit the internet in the last decade, with roughly this same opening? Joe Marketer found a secret to success in a completely unexpected place, and he opened his ad with this image and promise.
It was in large part thanks to Jon Benson’s 3X VSL formula.
Jon taught the NLP concept of a “pattern interrupt.”
Here’s the gist of it…
We spend most of our days in a trance. Maybe it’s a working trance. Maybe it’s a driving trance. Or an eating trance. Or a Facebook trance. Or a web-surfing trance. Or a YouTube trance. Or a Netflix trance. Or whatever.
Basically, our minds are selectively focused on one thing. And largely ignoring all other inputs. Not only that, our minds are so focused on doing what we’re doing, that we’re not thinking critically ABOUT what we’re doing.
When you are “lost in a good book,” or spend an hour scrolling Facebook and are not sure where the time went, this is what’s going on.
As long as this trance is not interrupted, you’re basically stuck in that groove.
As marketers and advertisers, we need to get people OUT of their current groove, and INTO our groove…
And yes, this has at least something to do with that monkey. Which we’ll get to in a minute.
In order to get a prospect engaged with our ad, we need them to stop thinking about whatever it is that they’re currently thinking about.
And we want their total attention on our story.
Now here’s where we get to the monkeys.
I was scrolling Google News this morning, and I saw this headline from Live Science: Neuroscientists discover ‘engine of consciousness’ hiding in monkeys’ brains.
Of course, I clicked.
And I was fascinated by the study detailed in this article.
(Not sure about the animal ethics, but the finding is fascinating.)
Basically, researches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison put two macaque monkeys under anesthesia. After they’d been unconscious for a couple hours, they electrically stimulated different areas of the brain.
When they stimulated the central lateral thalamus specifically, it was like putting jumper cables on the monkey’s consciousness…
The woke up immediately.
Same thing happened when the monkeys were asleep.
A little jolt to the central lateral thalamus, and you’ve got a woke monkey.
Now imagine that macaque is there sleeping, having a nice little dream about eating figs (or whatever the heck it is these particular monkeys eat)…
When JOLT.
Wide awake. Consciousness suddenly in a brand new place.
Within seconds, they could go from a vivid dream of delicious figs to sitting there in the lab with these strange human creatures babbling on excitedly around them…
And what the heck does waking up monkeys have to do with marketing and advertising?
Everything!
Remember how I said we spend most of our days in a trance? Well, you can think of that like the dreaming monkey.
Except, your prospect is a strange human creature, and not a macaque monkey. And they’re not dreaming of figs, they’re eagerly anticipating whatever delicious treat will come from their next scroll down Facebook.
They’re deep in that groove — that dream.
If you try to gently redirect the dream, they’ll be back in their own groove in no time.
You have to jolt them awake.
Because when we wake up, we forget the dream we were having mere moments ago.
And your goal, if you truly want to engage your prospect, must be to move them from the trance they were in to the trance that comes from engaging with your story.
That’s the point of the pattern interrupt — why it’s so effective, and why it became so popular.
Now at this point, following the formula can feel a little gimmicky and over-done.
But the principle still holds, as much as ever…
In fact, there’s another phenomenon from brain research that I find fascinating — and possibly connected…
When someone is startled or surprised, there’s an activity spike in their thalamus…
This phenomenon of ponto-geniculo-occipital or PGO “spikes” has been known for decades.
Sleeping cats were startled with a loud noise, and a spike in activity happened in the thalamus, deep inside their brains.
Similar spikes have been seen during REM sleep, presumably when the cats were dreaming. And since then, we’ve discovered these are common across mammals, and can happen in waking consciousness.
In fact, hypnotist Mike Mandel uses the idea of PGO spikes from the startle reflex as a working model for understanding instant hypnosis inductions.
That is, by startling someone, you can effectively wake them up from whatever trance they were in. At which point their consciousness is rapidly looking to grab onto something. And in the right context, this jolt to their awareness can be used to near-instantaneously drop them into a hypnotic state.
Another way to look at this…
When we are startled or surprised, we have a moment of confusion. We’re popped out of our groove. We’re looking for an answer. We’re looking for a new groove.
The pattern interrupt is taught at the mechanism to make this happen…
It doesn’t happen if there’s an obvious connection.
For example, it’s not really a pattern interrupt if you say, “My name is Roy, and here’s a weight set. And in a moment, you’ll discover exactly how this weight set could shed unwanted fat off your midsection, help you reach your ideal weight, and look smokin’ hot when you’re buck naked.”
That’s expected. It’s obvious. There’s no surprise that a weight set has something to do with getting fit.
Maybe monkeys and copywriting is more of a shock. It did the trick for you, if you’re still reading.
Likewise, a dude with a nice car and a mansion might not be shocking when talking about wealth, but a banana taped to the wall might be.
The key is to be on the lookout for these things — and grab ‘em where you find ‘em.
John Carlton called this “Sales Detective Work.”
His famous “one-legged golfer” ad is a perfect example of this.
You find the story that causes you to say, “WHAT?!” — because you just can’t believe that it’s related to what you’re talking about.
That’s your pattern interrupt.
It will shock and surprise your prospect out of their groove, and cause a PGO spike.
And with a few lines of nicely-finessed copy, you can help them wake up from whatever trance-dream they were in mere moments before… Drop into your groove…
And then follow your story all the way to the sale.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
