Turn unbelievable
into believable
Verisimilitude:
A More Authentic Approach to Writing
With a healthy dose of “V-factor,” what you write becomes more trustworthy and credible.
One of the tools in my arsenal as a marketing writer is to make sure my copy contains plenty of verisimilitude.
No need to run to the dictionary. Verisimilitude refers to an idea that appears to be true — whether true or not. A statement could be true, but without verisimilitude, it may not come across that way.
I get weary typing “verisimilitude,” so I call this quality of marketing communication the “V-factor.”
Add V-factor to make your copy more believable.
Here’s an example: A client may tell me that their technology delivers a 200-percent improvement for a specific performance metric.
Sure, that’s impressive. The only problem is that citing a 200-percent improvement doesn’t have much V-factor. It just seems like a rough estimate, not a firm statistic. Citing a 198-percent or 204-percent improvement claim would add more V-factor.
Another example: In November I received a mailing from a company offering furnace tune-ups for 50 percent off the regular price.
If they left it at that, I wouldn’t be inclined to call because I’m rather wary of steep discounts. However, they offered me a believable reason for the low pricing — that the company gets swamped in December, but not in November, thus the lower pricing.
That may have been an exaggeration,
but it certainly had plenty of V-factor.
V-factor reminds me of the story of how the height of Mount Everest was first calculated.
According to Wikipedia, one of the first Everest surveys was made in 1856. Using the technology of the era, the height was determined to be exactly 29,000 feet.
But the survey team feared that 29,000 feet would seem like a rounded estimate (lower V-factor), so they arbitrarily added two feet, reporting a height of 29,002 feet (higher V-factor).
I think you get the point. Make your copy more believable. Add a healthy dose of V-factor.
