The Science-based Reason You Need an “Ice Cream Story” In Your Business
I’ve been a copywriter for 17 years and when I work with clients 1:1, there’s always that initial conversation that can get a little awkward.
When you’re copywriting for others and you don’t know much about them yet, you essentially have to download their brain into your keyboard, which means you need to get really personal about their life, their vulnerabilities, and what makes them tick.
All of these things will inform your copy and allow you to create nuances in their messaging that is specific to them.
My process for this is a little unconventional, and I’ve never really shared it publicly before, but there is ONE question that I love asking…
We discuss all sorts of things, like:
- “Where did you grow up?”
- “What’s your family like?”
- “What’s your professional background?”
- “Why do you do what you do?”
The list goes on, but you get the idea!
But out of all the questions I ask, there’s one that still continues to stick out as my favorite after all these years and a recent Atlantic article proved to me WHY!
The question is: “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor… and why?”
When you first read that, it might feel a little silly and maybe even child-like. It sounds like one of those things that kids might ask each other at recess one day when they’re eating their orange push pops from lunch.
As a grown adult who owns a business, you’re probably wondering why it matters if your favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate or mint chocolate chip. (Mine is mint chocolate chip, by the way!)
Does this really inform your copy and messaging that much?!
Maybe not the flavor itself… but the second part of that question (the “why”) DOES!
To help you understand what I mean, go ahead and think about that question for yourself.
What’s your favorite ice cream flavor and WHY?
Chances are when you really take time to think deeper about ice cream and the why behind your favorite flavor, there are a dozen memories that come flooding back to you.
Maybe there’s the memory of where you first ate it or the memory of making homemade chocolate ice cream with your grandparents or a certain feeling or emotion that the flavor brings up for you.
Sounds pretty deep for such a simple question, huh?!
That’s why I say that your favorite ice cream flavor is truly like a window to your soul.
From asking that question alone, I can learn a LOT about my clients and have a much better understanding of what’s important to them.
Beyond the memories and feelings that a flavor creates, it can also be a metaphor for why you do what you do.
The flavor can be a reflection of your unique magic and how you see the world. 🍦✨
For example, when I asked one of my clients what her favorite flavor was, she said chocolate chunk. When I asked why, she said that she LOVES to dig out the chocolate chunks.
And there it was! A perfect metaphor for her coaching program where she helps people DIG into the layers of their business and develop their personal branding.
This discovery led to writing an engaging nurture email to her list, which proved my point even further that you can truly write an email about ANYTHING.
(That’s one of my favorite email copy tricks for when you’re feeling stuck – you can learn the others here!)
For years, I’ve been asking this question with clients and on podcast interviews and the results are always astounding, so I always thought it was because ice cream was a “shortcut” to access someone’s deepest childhood nostalgia and emotions.
While that’s true, there’s actually more to it!
And that’s where that article I mentioned earlier comes in. When reading the article, I literally shouted to my phone, “YES, finally! Someone else gets why ice cream matters so much.”
The article said:
“Ice cream is delicious, but it’s also a direct line to daydreams and memories – of leisure, of afternoons in the sun, of the excitement you felt as a 5-year-old meeting the ice-cream truck as it rolled down your street.
In 2017, the culture writer Matt Siegel noted an Austrian study that found that “only ice cream lowered the human startle response in men and women (at least when ingested by syringe), whereas chocolate and yogurt did not produce statistically significant outcomes across genders.”
This suggests that the comfort of ice cream goes much deeper than “the physiological effects of sugar, fat, temperature, and perceived sweetness,” Siegel writes. “The phenomenon, it appears, is largely psychological.”
So, not only does ice cream literally calm you down it also provokes those powerful memories and daydreams. And here’s the really COOL part:
The writer Margaret Visser argues that ice cream evokes two kinds of nostalgia: one for childhood memories, which recall that feeling of comfort, and the other for “elsewhere” – like summer vacations, beaches, whatever elsewhere means to the rememberer in question.
So, two things are happening when we think about ice cream:
- Comfort
Ice cream is the ultimate comfort food, so when you share an ice cream related story or metaphor, you’re actually evoking deep childhood feelings of safety and comfort.
And it’s all happening under the surface of a fun story.
- Desire for “elsewhere”
I would also add to this the “desire for something MORE.”
This is important because this is the state you want someone to be in when they BUY from you!
What I love about marketing, sales, and buyer psychology is that there’s always SO much happening under the surface.
There’s WHAT you’re saying, and then what it’s actually DOING in the brain of your readers.
And this is just one example of ways to either make that work FOR you or against you.
Now I want to know: what’s YOUR favorite flavor of ice cream? What’s the story behind it?
If you DM me your answer on Instagram, I’ll help you workshop it to find the deeper metaphor and meaning!
P.S. This is a perfect example of the type of marketing gold nuggets that the students in LaunchFlow Accelerator learn.🥇
With 17 years of copywriting experience, you can imagine that there’s MUCH more where this came from.
To be the first to know when the LaunchFlow Accelerator doors open again, CLICK HERE to get on the waitlist.