How To Fail Fast

How To Fail Fast

Imagine you are a copywriter and you have been approached by a potential client.

The client is currently selling a weight loss product that is geared towards women in the mid to late 40’s who don’t have time to go to the gym, but want to still lose weight.

The potential client has the idea of running a contest where women would compete to lose weight against other women and the winner would get a years supply of their products for free.

You listen to what they have to say, but you are not fully sold on the contest idea.

Yet the owner of the product is insisting on giving the idea a try.

What do you do?

This was a scenario a good friend of mines was faced with.

Being that I’m a copywriter myself, he asked me for my opinion.

Here’s what I told him.

First, the contest idea in this situation is something I would not suggest.

Why?

Because research has shown that women aren’t as motivated by contests as men are.

The idea of competing against other women in order to get the reward could potentially backfire especially if there are a lot of women (More on that in just a second)

This is why you will see men will literally compete on damn near anything.

But women…

Not so much.

And to further complicate things, when it comes to competing, if there are too many people competing then women are even less motivated to compete.

The theory is that with there being so many people in the group, it becomes harder for people to access where they stand and are therefore less motivated to try and come out on top.

Studies have also shown groups of 10 people or less tend to work better for competitions involving men.

So what does all this mean?

Well, if you want to motivate women to do something you want then don’t use competitions.

If you want to motivate men to do something then use competitions involving 10 men or less.

Until next time