"Tired of having too much money at the end of the month?"

Sometimes you have to say something unexpected to grab your reader’s attention.


Something like, “Tired of having too much money at the end of the month?” That’s a headline that snared me recently. Aren’t you usually concerned about the opposite problem, of having too little money at the end of the month?

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath say, “The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns.” 

“Surprise jolts us to attention,” as the Heaths say.

Can you use surprise in your next client communication? PIMCO’s Paul McCulley did it in “A Kind Word for Inflation.”