Whom do you want to date?
Dan Heath and Chip Heath, Made to Stick (Random House, 2007), address the “hey” phenomenon of branding in a recent FastCompany column. They started their research with the profiles on match.com.
You have two ways to make a quick impression on match.com, your photo and your headline…
Given the stakes, these headlines should really zing. They don’t. We examined more than 1,000 Match.com ads–from men and women, old and young. Our search yielded headlines like this one: “Hey.” Folks, if your opening line is “Hey,” you better be hot….
The “Hey” phenomenon is rampant in branding, they point out, and it’s based on fear…
Fear of saying too much. Fear of saying something clever that someone might think is stupid. Fear of saying something revealing that might turn someone off. The headlines try desperately not to exclude anyone. In doing so, they succeed at boring everyone.
To stand out, you have to be willing to turn some people off.
More: “Polarize Me If you want people to like you, first decide who needs to hate you.”