In this video, Kevin from Organic Growth shares how clickbait headlines have evolved over the years and why they still work. Inspired by a newsletter from Kaleigh Moore, Kevin explores how classic ads like “Why isn’t this cake as good as my last one?” follow the same attention-grabbing formula as modern headlines.
Hi, I’m Kevin with Organic Growth, and in this video, we’re going to take a very short trip through the history of sensational clickbait-style headlines.
This specific video was inspired by an email newsletter that I got from Kaleigh Moore. This is a picture of her website. I subscribe to a number of newsletters; hers is pretty good—you might consider subscribing as well.
But before we take this little stroll through history, I want to show how modern studies show that clickbait headlines work.
In case the font is too small, I’m going to read the highlighted section:
“However, as expected, the levels of arousal and curiosity of clickbait headlines are significantly higher than those of traditional news headlines.”
That’s a fairly recent study that some people conducted.
The next one is kind of disturbing to me. A large-scale Twitter analysis revealed that nearly 60% of the shared URLs are never clicked upon.
That’s the disturbing part. This means that the headline of the article, on its own, is sufficient to trigger the information utility, emotional impact, and other motivations needed for a user to share an article.
Now, what it says about us that we share articles we haven’t read, I don’t really know, but I wish we would just take time and read them before we send them along.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this phenomenon of clickbait headlines is not new.
What prompted Kaleigh’s email newsletter that caught my attention was she found a copy of a magazine from 1939, and it contained a couple of really interesting ads that follow the same recipe that modern clickbait headlines do.
This one: “Why isn’t this cake as good as my last one? This simple baking secret yada yada yada.”
So there’s something you don’t know, and if you keep reading, you’ll learn what it is.
This one: “I did one lucky thing for my skin, and here is what happened.”
Again, there’s something you don’t know, so keep reading.
And then from today:
“A man with HIV asked strangers for some human contact. Their sweet reactions brought them to tears.”
Again, there’s something you don’t know, so keep reading—or in this case, click here.
So it’s the same formula again. There’s something you don’t know—keep reading, click here.
So how did we learn that this works?
And how did we know this in 1939?
There’s a guy—his name is Edward Bernays, and he’s considered to be the father of public relations, which in 1939 was about 20 years old.
Basically, he saw how effective World War I propaganda techniques were, and he brought them to marketing.
He is now known as the father of public relations.
And coincidentally—or not—his mother was the sister of Sigmund Freud, so he had access to the father of psychoanalysis in the process of becoming the father of public relations.
His Wikipedia page might be of some interest—it contains predominantly factual information, but check it out. He’s an interesting guy.
So what matters here is that clickbait headlines worked then, and they work now.
So keep them coming. I mean, if it works, don’t fix it.
