Yes, indeed. Maybe I will rewrite it to reflect his tone. Thanks for the idea, JR.

The headline is lil bit long. I wanted to bring in the factor of 3. So I had to use three names. Since this product is a figment of my imgaination, I had the "liberty" of using the celebs.

Thanks Anita.

Thank you Dot for all your inputs. Sure, I will use 'em all in my next letter. Or even the possible rewrite of this letter.

Bruce, I am waiting for you.

Thanks Doc. You are doing a great job enforcing civility here.

I look forward to your take on my letter too.

It's fun learning.

Thanks my folks,

--Edward "The Apu"

What is this niceness that you speak of? I'm not sure I can handle it

With the constructive criticism though, I think I will give it a try.

Alright. I will try my shot with the title, as this is the area that broke the deal for me.

Basically the issue you are dealing with is the so called "disbelief suspension". There are ways to achieve this and I will start with minimal, subtle changes all the way to a complete paradigm shift.

My first instinct of what needs changing is the name of celebrities. Basically all the ones you mention in the title are very well known and thus inaccessible.

Think of the alternative:

How Did This Tall Russian Scientist That No One Knows About Earn The Complete
Trust Of Bruce Willis,
Madonna and Traci Bingham When
It Came Down To Shaking Off The Unwanted Pounds In Just 48 Hours?

What changed? There are fewer names and one of them is probably unknown to the reader. What does this achieve? A stop scan. Who the heck is Tracy Bingham? That's what your readers will think and since they realize her relative unimportance, they will question her presence there. Why is she in that title? Well, if you're lucky, they'll believe that it is because she actually used the product and thus you are one step closer to credibility. Because the next thing your readers will do, will be reading the names of the real celebrities and think something like: "Holy s*it, they are for real"

Alright, the first iteration is over. Let's deal with the tall Russian scientist. The name of the game this time is not mainly the suspension of disbelief, but rather with the "stop scan", attracting attention issue. Where is the problem? "Tall Russian Scientist" works indeed much better than "Russian Scientist", but it's still not enough, so we have to dig deeper in the American sub-conscience and come out with an angle that doesn't ring hype and Colgate ads. The obvious answer? The Cold War. Let's see how this goes:

What Is The Single Cold War Secret That Few Know About Which Earned The Complete
Trust Of Bruce Willis,
Madonna and Traci Bingham When
It Came Down To Shaking Off The Unwanted Pounds In Just 48 Hours?

In the "Few Know About" vs "No one knows about", the issue is about credibility. My variation seems much more reasonable and given that you already have testimonials, the latter really doesn't make sense.

As you might notice, the cold war reference left the entire title a bit disjointed. I mean there's quite a long road from nuclear warfare to unwanted pounds, to put it mildly, so the "unwanted pounds" bit is under attack next.

What Is The Single Cold War Secret That Few Know About Which Earned The Complete
Trust Of Bruce Willis,
Madonna and Traci Bingham When
It Came Down To Accelerating Their Metabolism And Sizzling Away As Much As 19 Pounds In Just 53 Hours?


"Metabolism", as someone mentioned before, does the trick to give a passing point between the disparate references mentioned above and adds some weight of its own. As for the 19 pounds reference, this was drawn from Madonna's testimonial and from respecting the rule of 5 (you basically want to avoid numbers like 10, 20, multiples of 5, because they sound like they are made up). The 48 hrs reference went through a similar process.

"Sizzling away" deserves a special note. It's basically a piece of neuro-language pattern, it brings forth an auditory trigger to which your target audience can't help but react. All right, the NLP bit might be too much to call it, but let's give a nod to Harlan .

This about does it for now.

I may not be a champion of niceness, but I do hope that this helps :P

Best regards, George

I'm sorry, Edward. Due to the recent criticism of criticism , I'll not be doing any critiques.