Wanton Smile

The dictionary defines wanton as:

excessive: unrestrained, heedless of reasonable limits, or characterized by greed and extravagance.
-wanton indulgence

More often than not, people are trusting.  They trust that a site is reputable, legitimate, and content worthy.  They want to believe that what they see is truly what it is.  Sometimes this is true but, often times, you find that you have been pulled in by the glitter of fantasy. 

Without being aware of it, we become victims of bait and switch.  Soon we find ourselves spending $10 here, $40 there and, when we get what we paid for, it becomes useless because it isn’t what we really needed or wanted in the first place.  Or, we find that the site offering something free, wasn’t truly free in the first place.  Again, the bait and switch.

Landing pages, advertisements, infomercials are designed to pull you in and get you to dig deep into your pocket-book.  The beauty of a good advertiser or a good copywriter is to get you to spend your time on their site and feel a sense of trust.  Once that trust is established and embedded in you, you are more apt to willingly spend your hard earned cash.  So not only are you spending your valuable time but you are spending your hard earned money.

A good copywriter and a good advertiser knows how to bypass your critical faculty (the part of your brain that makes judgement) and get you to think that it is your idea to purchase their product.  But is it really your idea in the first place, or is it a seed planted in your brain to make you think it is your idea?  The truth … they don’t care if the product is good for you, they just want you to buy it.

This is what I call the ‘Wanton Smile’.  For in the smile itself, we feel a sense of warmth and trust which, in turn, makes the buyer believe yet, underneath that smile is a motive to get you to part with your money.  That is how good copywrite and good advertisement works.  It’s the WOW factor. 

The next time you decide to buy something, analyze why?  One must ask their self the WIIFM question.  What’s in it for me?  Think about why you are buying that product.  Did you start out looking for it before you found it?  Or did you start out looking for something else and you came across it, then became amazed and WOW’ed by it?

I hope this gives you something to think about the next time you pick up the phone and begin dialing the number from an advertisement, infomercial, or a landing page.