Sick of Cookie Cutter Templates and Formulas

I’m sick-to-death of cookie cutter templates and formulas.

 

I’m so sick of them that I had the same lucid dream for the third or fourth time last night.

 

At first blush, the dream may not seem to relate to the topic at hand, but stick with me for a moment, because it does. I finally figured out the symbolism of the dream, and it has to do with — you guessed it!!! — cookie cutter templates and formulas designed to make doing business seem “safer” and less risky.

 

In the dream, I’m trying to get from one place to another (quite a distance,  a number of blocks) in as straightforward a manner as possible. I’m in a hurry to reach my destination.

 

I’m in a very wealthy, Old Money-type neighborhood, from what I can see from the sidewalk. These are your basic old-time “gated communities,” encased in what appear to be solid block walls that separate one parcel of property from another.

 

I decide to scale one of the walls and walk along the series of interconnecting walls to get across the neighborhood faster than I could by walking around the perimeters on sidewalks.

 

As soon as I get  atop one of the walls, I realize it’s a little wobbly. A series of earthquakes and apparent ground settling have caused it to become unstable and treacherous to walk on.

 

The farther I go on my journey across fortress walls, the ricketier they become, to  a point where nearly every step I take causes pieces or sections of them to fall away and into the yards they were built to protect from outsiders, from incursions against their sovereign safety.

 

This dream segued immediately to my mother telling me she had taken a cab across town to a world-famous stationery store in a big city. She explained, “You know the one. You can see it from blocks away because it’s built high into the sky so you can’t miss it. You can point at it from a cab and say, ‘Take me there.'”

 

“Well, when I got there, I went in and there were stacks upon stacks, on multiple floors, of greeting cards and stationery options. I thought ‘I’ve hit the jackpot. I’ll find something unique here.’

 

“But when I got to looking more closely at them, I noticed they were all pushed into their slots in a bunch–you could even see where the machine they’d used to push them into the slot had shorn off  one of the final cards in the stack–you could see a skill saw-like abrasion in it that defaced the back of the last card. And I quickly realized there wasn’t an original card or piece of stationery in the whole place–just a bunch of cookie cutter sentiments, images, and stationery that you can find in every other stationery store.”

 

When I woke up, “cookie cutter templates and formulas” was top of mind.

 

As I learned copy writing–and as I continue to learn about it (because the learning never ends, or I’d get bored with it)–I came across templates and formulas that helped reduce the risk of failing to write conversion-prone sales copy: AIDA, skyscraper, Storyboard, WIIFM, and more… a whole series of insights for how to write riveting copy. (If you’re a web designer, you see the same kind of “wisdom” everywhere you go to read about your craft.)

 

But I also saw–and still see today–ham-handed attempts to emulate other people’s successes using their templates or formulas and, in most cases, the results are as likely to shoot you in the foot as they are to skyrocket you to fame.

 

Like a recipe for soup or any other home-made food, a cookie cutter template or formula is just that: cookie cutter. It has no life of its own. It can’t make Grandma’s soup the way Grandma made it because she never used the exact same amounts of everything every time she cooked. She embellished, using what was on hand, and she was never wrong. She knew her recipe intimately enough to be able to alter it just so, as necessary, to still get a deeply satisfying result.

 

As an amateur DIY copywriter (or even a pro) you can’t magically make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear using a template or  formula.  I certainly don’t! You have to have on-board, inside you, the rhythm and cadence of a true communicator.

 

Ham-handed versions of formula-driven copy will convert as poorly as copy you’ll write using no formula or template. If you don’t know what you’re doing to start with, a formula or template can’t help you. It will only help you look silly alongside other copywriters who have the requisite skills on-board to tweak the “recipe” sufficiently that they don’t look like they’re using a “formula ” at all!

 

The same goes with websites. Sure, you can find a template at Wix or any other number of DIY website portals, fill it in, and have a presentable frame for your words. But it will look exactly like too many other websites, which will disappoint your visitors.

 

It’s when you find a web designer (as I have in Lisa) who can customize a WordPress theme (one you’ll actually own under your own domain name, one that can’t disappear if the property owner decides to pull up stakes, as can happen with Wix, Facebook and other platforms you don’t own) to make it uniquely yours.

 

The big wigs can build security fences around their properties to their hearts’ content, but what they build will become unstable and rickety over time, because consumers increasingly want something they can call uniquely their own: hand-made greeting cards to send to loved ones that cost no more than cookie-cutter cards from high profile brand names; riveting copy that no formula can recreate or emulate precisely; and website “frames” that reflect the personality of the person who owns it.  That’s why craft bazaars and marketplaces are still so popular with people who want to find something special and unique for their loved ones.

 

In a world of cookie cutter sameness, standing out is what will make you special. Don’t ever forget that and you’ll never go too far wrong!

 

If you want website copy that is unique to you and that will help you stand out uniquely from your competitors, get in touch with me! My email address is krisATwordwhispererDOT net.