Stop Sending Monotonous Pitches: How to Use Hook Points to Command Attention
- editorial team
- 15 hours ago
- 3 min read
In an era where consumers make split-second decisions, media growth specialist Brendan Kane’s framework proves that if you can’t capture interest in three seconds, your message might as well not exist.
By: MMM Editorial Team
If you’ve ever been in the situation where you spend hours crafting the "perfect" press release or social media post, hit send, and then... silence, you are not failing; you just need to revise. These monotonous pitches haunt your sent folder because they lack the one thing every journalist needs: a Hook Point to command attention.
A Hook Point is a concept popularized by Brendan Kane in his viral book How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World. It is an intriguing combination of text, insight, and personality that stops the scroll and draws attention to your message. We use this framework at MMM to bridge awareness, authority, and action into a single compelling phrase.
Breaking Down a Standout Hook Point to Command Attention
A Hook Point is not clickbait. While clickbait tricks readers, a Hook Point promises audiences that your message holds value. To find yours, you have to stop focusing on your design and start focusing on your mission. When MMM first started, “Get your brand into the news” was a strong hook, but the market has changed. Today, the market is flooded with cheap PR courses and PR packages that promise the world but deliver nothing more than a PDF. Today, when we say “I will get you in the news,” it sounds short-changing and repetitive. To stand out, we had to stop focusing on the design (the press release) and start focusing on our mission: completely revolutionizing current systems to make space for the solutions we actually need.
Leveraging the “Picture Superiority Effect”
It is not just about what you say; make sure to also focus on packaging. Brendan highlights this other idea of the Picture Superiority Effect. Information presented with images is retained significantly better by all audiences, which is why, at MMM, we prioritize Behind the Scenes content at press conferences and video setups. We understand that the lighting, the crispness of the LED set-up, and the mobile optimization are what determine if someone reads your full article.
From “General” to “Irresistible”
To craft your own strong Hook Point, you need to be specific. Try getting people to look at a common problem in a completely new way. Use “If/Then” statements to posit the problem and yourself as the solution.
Read the difference here:
From: “Making the media work for you.”
To: “Elevating stories that matter."
When you move away from pushing sales onto people and focus more on the value you can deliver, you are encouraging audiences to take action with you by their side.
Interested in working with our team? Book a discovery call below:
For Subscribers Only: Hearing advice isn't particularly helpful if it doesn't come with the resources to put it into action. Below we go over some of the infrastructure that helped our firm embody this advice across all levels.