Harvesting screams won't always work...

Listening to your customers is so important, so you can't afford to be stuck in your ways. Especially when the data is telling you to change.

Sometimes you need to scrap what you're doing and start again. If your customers aren't responding to what you're saying, and they're not engaged, you need to change your plan. Don't ignore what's right in front of you. 

Just because you've been, say, harvesting screams for years, and 'it worked fine before' - times change. If your results show that laughter is more powerful, go with that instead.

What am I talking about? The film Monsters, Inc. of course. 

The city of Monstropolis is powered by the screams of children, with their slogan being 'We Scare Because We Care'. Because human children aren't as easily scared anymore, energy levels across the city are low, so they need to come up with a new plan. It soon comes to light that children's laughter generates more power than screams, but the CEO won't listen to this new information. He's stuck in his ways, and has a plan to kidnap children and steal their screams using the 'Scream Extractor' (it's actually really dark for a kids' film).

The CEO is later arrested for his plan. Once he's out of the picture, they start harvesting laughter instead of screams, and update the slogan to 'It's Laughter We're After', and the energy crisis is solved. 

So, why am I telling you this? 

Because you don't want to end up like the CEO - unwilling to change the strategy, despite the fact that it isn't working. There's no point repeatedly doing something just because it used to work (like copy that customers are no longer engaging with). 

Always be on the lookout for what is and isn't working in your copy, and if something isn't working... change it.

Let's update your copy!

~ Natasha
(Your favourite creative copywriter) ✨