The 16 human desires

The psychology behind winning ads

Author

Tom Hallett
June 15, 2023

Welcome back peeps đź‘‹

Let’s dive deep into the psychology behind winning ads.

Ad Secret #5: Deep desires

There are no quick hacks to make high-converting ads.

However, there is one thing you can always rely on: psychology.

So how can you apply psychology to your ads?

Here’s a simple answer: craft your messaging around a core desire.

In the book “Who Am I?” by Dr. Steven Reiss, he lists 16 core desires.👇

The 16 Human Desires

  1. Acceptance: the need to be appreciated

  2. Curiosity: the need to gain knowledge

  3. Eating: the need for food

  4. Family: the need to take care of one’s offspring

  5. Honor: the need to be faithful to the customary values of an individual’s ethnic group, family or clan

  6. Idealism: the need for social justice

  7. Independence: the need to be distinct and self-reliant

  8. Order: the need for prepared, established, and conventional environments

  9. Physical activity: the need for work out of the body

  10. Power: the need for control of will

  11. Romance: the need for mating or sex

  12. Saving: the need to accumulate something

  13. Social contact: the need for relationship with others

  14. Social status: the need for social significance

  15. Tranquility: the need to be secure and protected

  16. Vengeance: the need to strike back against another person


    - Dr. Steven Reiss, Who Am I?

There are many variations of this list, but this is my personal favorite.

So why is this relevant to ads?

Well, we often see purchases as simple transactions,

When they are actually rooted in profound psychological desires.

Let’s take a look at these 3 hooks:

These hooks are from 3 separate DTC brands selling products for men.

Yet, every hook refers to attracting women.

And what core desire does that tap into?

Romance.

These desires operate beneath the surface, in the subconscious.

They influence our decisions without us even realizing it.

Finding the desires

It all starts with knowing your customer.

The best place to start is with testimonials.

Look at your own testimonials, then look at what people are saying about your competitors and similar products on Amazon.

You could also use platforms like Reddit or TikTok to dive deeper into people’s unfiltered thoughts about the product.

Once you have done this, you’ll start to notice recurring themes & emotional triggers which apply to some of these core desires.

Make a list of the ones which are most relevant to the product.

Bonus tip: Export a CSV of testimonials to ChatGPT and prompt it to identify which desires from the Dr. Steven Reiss list are the most relevant.

Testing the desires

Now that you have decided on the core desires, it’s time to test.

A great way of doing this is by testing the hook copy.

Test a variety of hooks, where each individual hook is crafted around a specific desire.

Hooks are a great way of testing desires, because people usually stop scrolling when they are triggered emotionally.

But hooks aren’t the only way of testing desires.

You could test different scripts which are crafted around each desire.

The main thing to remember is that the messaging should be a clear reflection of the chosen desire.

  1. Analyze testimonials for recurring themes

  2. Create a list of the most relevant desires

  3. Identify winning desire with testing

Once you find a winning desire, you can start to craft entire videos around it with new angles, frameworks and iterations.

That’s all for this week folks,

Reply to this email if you have any questions on this subject, happy to help!

Cheers,

Tom