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Boring catalog copy is not a good thing. Boring product descriptions are uninteresting. And prospects and customers uninterested in your copy are easily enticed by copy that is more invigorating. This realization about the consequences of boring catalog copy came upon me recently via a rather unlikely source: my dog.  I’ve owned my dog for six months now. His name is Doc, and we adopted him from Northeast Coonhound Rescue. Doc is a hound mix, part coonhound and part pointer. Doc’s kind of a high-energy guy when he’s outside and for that reason, can’t go off leash. (Otherwise, he runs off for five hours to hunt in the swamp, but that’s a story for another day…) About a month ago, Doc suddenly seemed to dislike going for walks. It got so bad that, at one point, he wouldn’t even leave the house unless we bribed him out with cookies. This was very weird behavior from a dog who previously would drag me down the steps if I even cracked open the door. Once we got him outside, he would refuse to move. Out came the cookies, more bribing, and eventually, we’d get him going. But even during the walk, there would be bouts of stopping and refusing to budge. Now, I’ve been around dogs all my life, but Cesar Millan I’m not, so I got the name of a trainer from the rescue we adopted Doc from. The trainer emailed me and asked all kinds of questions about Doc, to learn about his behavior and background. She also asked me to send a short video of Doc walking (or rather, not walking) on the leash, which I did. After viewing the video, she responded that based on Doc’s behavior and body language while on the leash, she believed that his problem was that he was bored. That where I wanted to take him was not interesting to him, so he refused to follow. Huh, imagine that.
And just like my dog, who found some walking routes so tedious to bear that he balked at following; boring, dull catalog copy can have the same effect on your prospects and customers. They won’t want to follow along, either, if it’s not interesting to them. And when that happens, you’ll have bigger problems to deal with than just a dog who refuses to move. (Check out my earlier blog post for some tips on spicing up your catalog copy.) Comments are closed.
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