Landing Copy Hero

Landing Copy: Hero (subhead/lede)

The hero section's job is narrow: make the headline's claim credible in one breath, before the reader has committed to reading further. It is not the place to make the full case — that's every section after it. A hero section that tries to argue, prove, or handle objections has taken on a different section's job.

This skill covers the section immediately beneath the locked headline only. The headline itself is landing-headline-writer's landing-copy-headline skill.

What this section answers

One question, in this order:

1. What is the mechanism, named plainly? The headline led with the outcome and deliberately withheld the mechanism (per landing-copy-headline's outcome-subject test) — this section is where that mechanism gets named, in plain language, for the first time.
2. Why should the reader believe the headline's claim is achievable, not aspirational? One line of credibility, not a proof point (proof points belong to landing-copy-proof) — a plain statement of how the mechanism gets the reader from their current state to the headline's promise.

The algorithm

Per this core's fixed paragraph algorithm (landing-copywriter's own file): this section's paragraph count is set by however many beats landing-sequencer assigned it, almost always 1 (a hero is rarely a multi-beat section). Within that single paragraph:

1. Sentence 1 — name the mechanism. Plain verb, plain noun. No abstraction standing in for the thing itself (the same plain-verb discipline landing-strategist applies at the subject-statement stage).
2. Sentence 2 (only if the beat has room) — the credibility bridge. One sentence connecting the mechanism to the headline's promise: how doing this thing gets the reader that outcome. Not evidence, not a number — that's landing-copy-proof's job — just the logical link made explicit.

Two sentences is the ceiling for a single-beat hero. If it's taking a third sentence to make the mechanism credible, the mechanism itself is underspecified — flag it back rather than padding the section to compensate.

Writing standard (scoped to this section)

• Apply landing-copywriter's full writing standard (inflated words, em dashes, hedge stacks, etc.) — this section gets no exception.
• No proof, no numbers, no named evidence here. A stat or case study in the hero section is landing-copy-proof's content pulled forward — redirect it downstream, keep this section to the plain claim.
• No objection-handling here. "But you might be wondering..." belongs to landing-copy-objection, not this section.
• Match the token system's CTA styling intent only if this section carries a CTA (rare — most builds put the CTA in landing-copy-cta's section instead).

Self-test

• The mechanism is named in plain language, not gestured at.
• The section makes no argument, cites no proof, and handles no objection — those are the next sections' jobs.
• Paragraph count matches the beat count landing-sequencer assigned — 1 paragraph for a single beat, not padded to 2 for weight.
• Read against the locked headline: does this section make the headline more believable, or does it just restate the headline in different words? Restating fails this test.

Constraints

• Never draft the headline itself — that's landing-copy-headline, already locked before this section starts.
• Never pull proof points, stats, or objection-handling into this section to make it feel more substantial — a thin hero section is correct; padding it borrows from a downstream section's job.