You’re sitting in a theater.
The room darkens. The crowd silences. The screen lights up with a bird’s eye view of New York City and the Empire State Building. People are rushing into the street, talking fast in an emergency. The narrative teases you into an adventure…
…into the unknown
…into a new world that’s going to change everything.
Then, you see a ship.
Sailing into the foggy ocean. Lighting strikes in the background. A skull island in the distance. A ghostly island.
Suddenly –
*ROARRRRR*
Nothing like anything you’ve heard of before.
Everything’s moving so fast until…
The trailer ended with an epic showdown between Kong and T. Rex.
This is the movie trailer for King Kong. A thrilling adventure presented to us by Peter Jackson (the mastermind behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy).
Except…
It wasn’t.
The epic Kong vs T. Rex battle?
That was only a fraction of the movie. The majority? A bunch of non-important humans trying to escape an island and sail back to New York.
Come on.
Give me the damn monster!
This same mistake happened again…
For the 2014 Godzilla movie. The trailer promised the world… when the real movie delivered merely 9.5 minutes of Godzilla.
But guess what…
King Kong generated 556.9M worldwide.
Godzilla? 529M.
Both box office successes.
Lesson?
If you get the hook (aka trailer) right… you have the attention.
Even if you didn’t deliver… it’s (most likely) still going to be a massive success.
That’s why –
The hook, usually the first 50-100 words in a story email, is arguably the most important part of email storytelling.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about next.
To be continued…
– WYH