You won’t appeal to all of the people all of the time so you need to trust gut instincts (and perhaps focus groups …). I have a couple of people who occasionally review my work to provide opinions and advice. I don’t always follow their advice but am grateful for it nonetheless.

Great post though … !

I thought it was a trick before – where people would maybe admit to seeing both just because they were coaxed into thinking both were possible.

Anyways, now I can make her change either way. I really don’t think it has anything to do with the capabilities of one’s mind though…

On a more serious note, one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as a direct mail copy writer is trying to write to some amorphous “group” rather than an individual. Even if the individual isn’t a real somebody, I think speaking to one individual always works better than speaking to several. Some of the worst copy I’ve seen trys to pull in often disparate characteristics of the target market and include them all in the copy.

I think the same is true with most public speaking. The best public speakers present as if they were carrying on a one-on-one conversation rather than making a speech.

A conversational tone convinces. A test of good copy is “how would I say this if I were speaking to my best friend?”

Actually, I saw this animation before, and I could see her spinning counter-clockwise, but only in Internet Explorer. Why? Because IE is a lot slower than Firefox!