Guarantee Attention & Action with the “Disrupt & Reframe” Psychological Hack
By: Nick Maier
Tags: Words, Persuasive Writing, Copywriting, Psychology, Copywriting Tips

On the back end of yesterday’s blog we had an exceptional Question of the Day asked about another of the psychological shortcuts, psychological tips and cognitive bias tools that we can utilise in our copywriting

It comes from @johannesegberts, who asks about Pattern Interrupts inside of the copywriting specific psychological framework

If you aren’t familiar with pattern interrupts, they’re essentially a psychological aspect inside of our “attention demanding” framework. Think of something that draws your attention away from where it currently is — that is essentially a pattern interrupt. Your prior pattern of attention and thought was interrupted…

Think about how we are in specific moods at times and then something will come along - bet it a thought or person, or we hear something - and BANG…

… we experience a complete and total state change because our attention has shifted from what we were focused on to what we are now focusing on

When do we want to interrupt patterns with our copy? At almost any and all times!

Attention grabbing headlines

Attention grabbing our images

Pieces of copy that create tension and disconfirm the readers original thoughts and beliefs. Things that shape up their worldview

The pattern interrupt is one of the powerful psychological frameworks that we can utilise in our copy, specifically one known as the disrupt and reframe.

The simplest example of this is when we think about babies…

They do not want to eat their food… they’re crying… their attention is drawn elsewhere… so what do we do? We play a game and say “…here comes the airplane”

They focus on this imaginary airplane and after a couple of minutes they’ve completely eaten all the food. The airplane support them to forget they didn’t want to eat and they took the action we desired

Their thought pattern had been disrupted and reframed in another way… about the fact that they don’t want to eat, and the food is gone

In your copy, think about how to can say something that creates some tension to generate emotion that ties into your audience’s worldview, perspective, or story that they’re telling themselves

Something that makes them stop, think, potentially disagree and deepen the level of attention of theirs that you have. With this deepened attention we can then tell them a story and then at the end we can reframe — by giving a piece of advice, information or education that’s going to reframe their perspective and move them closer to being in alignment with our desired call to action

The disruption needs to be something that your readers, listeners and audience have an association with. This is the key. To discover this you need to look at the stories they’re familiar with. Is there an association that there’s an attachment to that’s going to disrupt my current readers attention? If so, how can I use to to grab their attention and make them come over to listen to what I have to say…

The Disrupt & Reframe. It’s powerful. Use it

Journaling Prompt: what stories are my readers attached to fictionally, or do they tell themselves inside their own heads that I can use to disrupt their current attention and tell my story instead?

Nick Maier

@nickmaier__