Mariana Henninger

EMMY-winning filmmaker + founder of
Marketing strategist // Emotional storytelling for conversions
Past @nytimes @NBC @WSJ @TIME

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

My latest doc is the result of a year-long investigation and features exclusive interviews of #havanasyndrome victims speaking out for the first time about this mind-boggling national security mystery.
https://t.co/p7mejuApgQ

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@pkp_io Oh awesome, ty! Really love it -- and always encourage my students to buy it!

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@Mike_Stelzner Love this! I'd add:
It's so important to show your audience WHO you are, and not hide behind "providing value" or what's it in for them. People do business w people, they care about the values of the person behind the offer.
Creating an instant emotional connection is critical.

[David Perell @david_perell]

Harry Dry is the best copywriter I know.

He's built a 130,000-person newsletter teaching people how to do it, and by the end of this interview, you'll be at least a Green Belt in copywriting.

Some of his rules for writing:

1) A great sentence is a good sentence made shorter.

2) Writing great copy begins with having something to say in the first place.

3) Copy is like food. How it looks matters.

4) Since the look of copy matters so much, don't write copy in Google Docs. Write it in Figma (so you can write and design at the same time).

5) Kaplan's Law of Words: Any word that isn't working for you is working against you.

6) You know a paragraph is ready to ship when there's nothing left to remove. It's like a Jenga tower. The entire thing should collapse if you remove something.

7) Make a promise in the title so the reader knows exactly what they're going to get if they click. Then, deliver on the promise.

8) The three laws of copywriting: (1) Make it concrete, (2) make it visual, and (3) make it falsifiable.

9) Make it concrete: Don't be abstract. For an example, say you're writing about habits. Don't talk about "productive routines." That's abstract. Write about "waking up at 6am to write" instead. It's concrete — and much more vibrant.

10) Make it visual: People see in pictures. This is why instead of memorizing card numbers directly, world memory champions memorize cards by turning them into pictures and then back to cards.

11) Make it falsifiable: When you write a sentence that's true or false, you put your head on the chopping block, which makes people sit up in their seat.

12) When has a falsifiable statement resonated? Galileo got sentenced to a decade of house arrest for saying that the earth spins around the sun. That's a falsifiable sentence. But nobody would've done anything if he'd said that the earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object.

13) Write with the delete key. Using fewer words lets you be more impactful with the words you keep.

14) The job of a sales page is to make a bold claim at the top. Then spend the rest of the page backing up what you've said... with a ridiculous amount of proof.

15) If your competitor could've written the sentence, cut it.

16) Good copy is differentiated. Here's an example: Elon Musk shouldn't write "The Cybertruck is the world's best truck." Ford or Dodge can write that sentence. But only Elon can write: "The Cybertruck is tougher than an F-150 and faster than a Porsche."

17) Some days, the writing comes easily. Some days, it takes sweat. The reader doesn't care if you wrote for two minutes, two hours, or two days. The ink looks the same.

18) Great copy reads like your customer wrote it. Talk to them.

That's just an introduction to the copywriting philosophy of @harrydry.

I've shared the full interview below. I recommend you watch this one because we pull from so many visual references and do a lot of screen sharing. If you'd rather watch on YouTube, I've shared the link in the reply tweets.

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@MailerLite Nobody answered... 😂 but I was able to get in.

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@MailerLite Will scheduled emails be paused?

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@RiversidedotFM Have been trying to access a video for 2 hours now -- have tried support twice. Need to access this ASAP. Can you please help?

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@RiversidedotFM @SkeptixPrdxn Is there a part in this tweet where you apologize for the inconvenience caused 😶
Need to access some videos filmed yesterday ASAP and support just ghosted me, so back to end of queue. You can do better Riverside...

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@HRappleye Major pivot over here after massive burnout (and abuse by former boss) and I couldn’t be happier! Building something you actually own is a feeling that just can’t be beat. 😊💛

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@ted_ryce @ramit @Gisele_miami I agree! From a quick glance there isn’t much overlap besides using the term “a rich life” in his latest IG post.

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@NBCNightlyNews @RichardEngel Thank you for reporting on this!

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

The quicker in life you can emotionally detach yourself from things that don’t actually matter, the happier you will be.

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

“The brain simply believes what you tell it most. This isn’t science fiction, it’s science fact.”
- @marieforleo

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@Mike_Hixenbaugh @NBCNews @christinewin @alaaomarabi @MarshallCrook @tatejamesdotcom @newsemmys @ahylton26 Would not have been possible without your tenacious reporting @Mike_Hixenbaugh ✨✨

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@Mike_Hixenbaugh @NBCNews @christinewin @alaaomarabi @MarshallCrook @tatejamesdotcom @newsemmys @ahylton26 Woohoo 🥳

[Mike Hixenbaugh is mikehixenbaugh.com on BlueSky @Mike_Hixenbaugh]

Big congrats to my brilliant @NBCNews colleagues who told the story of Southlake in a longform documentary — now an Emmy nominee!

Congrats to @thisismariana, @christinewin, @alaaomarabi, @MarshallCrook, @tatejamesdotcom and the whole doc team. @newsemmys @ahylton26

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@Expedia 2 hours on the phone - and now am being told by the representative on phone that flight "doesn't exist" when I clearly see it on airline's website. PLEASE HELP.

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@BenMullin I can’t with how this industry consistently and skillfully creates whiplash PTSD and shows so much disregard for talented, insanely hard working people. These people worked themselves to the bone and can’t even appreciate what they spent months killing themselves to build.

[Mariana Henninger @thisismariana]

@HJSeidel I can’t with how this industry consistently and skillfully creates so much PTSD and shows so much disregard for the lives of talented, insanely hard working people.

[reynardmuldrake @reynardmuldrake]

We’re back to mandatory N95s in the hospital and y’all out here literally singing about being able to cough on each other on planes. I’m so goddamn tired.