Attention Hooks, Cold Opens, And Curious Questions: The Art of the Start
If you want to earn attention, nothing matters more than beginnings
Welcome to the Creativity Business, a newsletter about earning attention and differentiating yourself as a marketer or content creator. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up and get content & differentiation strategy delivered to your inbox every two weeks for free. Also… my new book, Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers comes out Oct 1 and is available for pre-order now.
How do you start a story? A video? A podcast? A newsletter?
Whether it’s non-fiction or fiction, B2B or B2C, or long-form or short-form in any medium, the start is the most important part. And there is an art to the start! As we learned from Scott Rensberger in the last edition, when it comes to anything you are putting out in the world to earn attention, the beginning deserves most of your attention. The ending is a close second, but here’s why beginnings matter more:
People will never get to the ending if your beginning stinks.
So let’s start with the start. Your goal is a mighty one: you have to make it impossible for your audience to stop watching, reading, or listening. What does that look like? Here are some of my favorite examples that earn attention immediately:
Six Incredible First Lines from Movies & Novels
“Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgement Day, they lived only to face a new nightmare; the war against the machines.” Terminator 2: Rise of the Machines
“This is the story of how I died. Don’t worry, this is actually a very fun story.” Tangled
“The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.” Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.” Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson
“My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.” The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving. (one of my favorite books of all time…)
Every one of these opening lines is a fantastic Attention Hook. Attention Hooks are exactly what they sound like - sometimes in just a single line, unexpected and incomplete information is offered in a way that is irresistible catnip for our brains. We learn just enough to have our curiosity sparked, but we instantly have so many questions. What happened? What’s going to happen? Who is this about? What would I do in this situation?
When we don’t have answers to these questions, we are compelled to keep watching, reading, and listening. Fantastic openings hook our attention because they compel us to stick around to find out what happens next.
The Sniffing Window is Very Short
Let’s imagine your ideal audience member has just discovered your content project. What is going through their mind? It’s pretty simple. They are looking for signs that this is going to be an excellent use of their precious, valuable attention. They might give you a minute. They might give you a page or two. On TikTok or Instagram Reels, they might give you two measly seconds! When people give something a try, they are sampling. They are trying to determine whether it’s worth it to stick around for the full experience.
Again, this sampling window is very short. If you don’t pass the sniff test, they are gone, and they’re not coming back. So you have to deliver something that smells great and passes the sniff test right away.
So how do you hook them right off the top? How do you get a sampler to convert into an interested audience member? Let’s start with what not to do…
The Unfortunate Reality of Most Beginnings
Here’s the strange reality, though. If, as an example, you’re a podcast listener, try listening to the first two minutes of a variety of random shows. Here’s what you’re likely to hear:
Over two minutes of ads
Host(s) rambling in an unfocused way, not telling the listener what to expect in the episode
A generic opening that is the same episode after episode and does nothing to differentiate the first two minutes of this episode from any other episode
Jumping straight into a long guest biography and introduction without telling the listener what the conversation is going to be about and what they will take away from it if they keep listening
These are the shows shedding loads of listeners in the first two minutes. It’s the same with any media format you produce: if you don’t respect every second of the audience’s time and attention, they will leave.
So how do you avoid the audience exodus? And what does content with a great Attention Hook look like? Here are a few different Attention Hook strategies to explore…
The Cold Open
There is a strategy you will recognize from countless TV shows and movies called the “cold open.” A cold open immediately drops audiences into the middle of a story. It could be a death-defying action scene at the start of a Mission: Impossible movie or it could be the discovery of a puzzling crime at the beginning of a police procedural show. Or it could be Dwight orchestrating the most over-the-top fire safety drill of all time on The Office…
A cold open plunges you into a story immediately, before any opening sequences and credits. As an audience member, you feel the attention hook. You are engaged right away, and you’re left hanging with all sorts of questions about what’s going to happen next, so you stick around past the credits and keep watching. Check out the cold open to the pilot episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer below. When no one knew what the show was about, it proved itself with drama and surprise before the opening credits.
It works in books, too. In a previous edition, Dan Heath shared how to use Story to “start strong and sticky.”
“Obsess about the first story in the book. If you don't grab attention with the first story in your book, shame on you, right? A reader has expressed enough interest to open the book, whether they've bought it or are just browsing it in the store. You’ve got one chance, and you’ve got to throw your best material at them. The stickiest story in your book should be the first thing.”
The Counterintuitive Thesis
It starts with an unconventional or counterintuitive thesis and promises to explain why this thesis makes more sense than conventional wisdom. We want to know more. Malcolm Gladwell is the undisputed master of this, from the 10,000-hour rule of expertise to the David and Goliath insight that underdogs have lots of unseen advantages over the favorites.
Gladwell always starts with a provocative, unexpected lens through which to see the world. His theses break patterns and undermine our current default understanding. And so… we want to know more. We want to understand if we are all actually seeing the world the wrong way.
(Similar to Gladwell, the Freakonomics team is another fantastic practitioner of counterintuitive insights–their tagline is “The Hidden Side of Everything.” Perfect!)
The Provocative Question or Surprising Information
It starts with a provocative question and promises the answer inside the content. Yet again, your attention hook is creating an open loop that audiences are compelled to try and close.
What’s the best way to protect yourself in a shark attack?
The one surprising ingredient that will improve every meal you cook.
Has productivity culture become dangerous for our mental health?
Even though I just made these up, I would almost certainly get hooked by all of them and want to know more.
The key, of course, is that you have to deliver the goods. To be 1000% clear, I am not advocating for clickbait in any way, shape or form. You have to actually have something interesting to say or share and you have to successfully satisfy the attention hook at the beginning.
The Promise of Value
If the nature of your content isn’t unexpected or surprising or dramatic, you can still create strong attention hooks by simply telling audiences what they’re going to get if they stick around.
As an audience member, I want to know what I’m going to learn if I keep listening, reading, or watching. Valuable information—the promise of getting smarter or understanding a concept—is another form of curiosity gap that needs closing. If the topic is interesting and you want that information, you will stick around.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to balance your family budget in 30 minutes a month
In this video, you’ll discover the pros and cons of renting versus buying a home.
In this newsletter, you’ll learn why beginnings are the most important element in your content and how to create effective ones that earn attention.
This is hopefully obvious by now, but starting with something unexpected, starting with a story, or starting with a promise of information or ideas that will be explained over the course of the episode helps people decide to move beyond sampling and dive into the entire content experience.
In the end, the cliche about relationships holds true for content: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Do your best to wow people as quickly as you can.
Prompts for Better Beginnings
Are the beginnings of your recent content formulaic, generic, or casual?
Are you putting enough effort into hooking your samplers with compelling beginnings?
What is a story or cold open you can use to kick off your content project?
What are the ways you can leave audiences wanting more once they start sampling?
How can you very quickly leave your audience with unanswered questions that you successfully answer deeper into your content project?
How can you entice your audience to stay with a compelling promise of what they’ll get?
What’s Earned My Attention Lately
Mohawk Chevrolet’s Office Parody
When you think of car dealership marketing, you probably think of yelling salespeople on cable TV or announcers with big voices talking about financing rates. You definitely don’t think about what Mohawk Chevrolet is doing - a fake documentary in the style of “The Office” about their dealership. It’s funny and unique, and people all over the internet suddenly know about a car dealership in Malta, NY. Love it! And in case you didn’t know, I’m a huge fan of fake Office-style documentaries on social…
(Thanks to Brittany Duggan for sharing this with me!)
The Greatest Zoom Home Studio I’ve Ever Seen
I recently had a Zoom call with my friend
, the former CMO of Slack and Zendesk, and I was absolutely awestruck at the scope and quality of the home studio that he has built for both video calls and content creation for . This is not “get a ring light and a new webcam.” This is an entirely different playing field. It feels like Bill has created something akin to a network news studio and… I might be envious. There is zero doubt that Bill earns attention with every single video call he’s on! Check out the specs and the video tour of the studio here.Rishad Tobaccowala on Generosity
Generosity is one of my favorite topics when it comes to marketing strategy. One of the core values of my book, Earn It, is about creating value for others and thinking about marketing and content as a gift. (I even wrote a post a while ago about “Giv’r Marketing”) I share Rishad’s writing here often because it resonates with me deeply and his thoughts on generosity are no exception.
Say What They Can’t Unhear
Last edition, I shared Tom Webster’s brilliant new book, The Audience Is Listening. This time, it’s Tamsen Webster’s new book, Say What They Can’t Unhear. (They are a Page Two book-writin’ power couple!) Tamsen was kind enough to share an advanced copy with me and I loved it - this is a refreshingly positive and human framework for creating lasting change. Connection > convincing. Alignment > arguing. Empathy > manipulation. Understanding > coercion. If you want to learn how to get buy-in for change, this is your book!
Earn It Updates
My audiobook is available for pre-order! This is not an ordinary audiobook because it follows all the advice in the book itself. It’s unconventional and produced like a podcast instead of a traditional audiobook. I worked with the amazing Pedro Mendes and Gaetan Harris and I’m really proud of how it’s all turned out. Check it out here.
New videos!
Meet my new social media coach
Some very strange book title advice from Gary and Perry
And… a spectacular Orca sighting that I ruined with a weird noise.
Speaking of Tamsen Webster, I shared an advanced copy of my book with her, and here are some very nice things she had to say about it: (Thanks, Tamsen!)
"How much do I love this book? Let me count the ways... Suffice to say, this book gives you the roadmap for making your content deliver on your dreams for it. Is it going to be easy? No—you'll have to Earn It, just like the title says. But if you're interested in creating content that captures people's hearts, heads, eyes, and ears, that's a craft, and there's no one better than Steve and this book, to teach you."
Tamsen Webster, Founder, Message Design Institute [and author of Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible]
Thanks so much for giving me your time and attention - I’ll see you in your inbox in a couple of weeks!
Steve
You need to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnoJwfnzmqA