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How To Sell
Using
Scientific Advertising
By Claude Hopkins
The uninformed would be staggered to know the amount of work involved in a single ad. Weeks of work sometimes. The ad seems so simple, and it must be simple to appeal to simple people. But behind that ad lie reams of data, volumes of information and months of research. This is no lazy man’s field. —Claude C. Hopkins
Copyright ©2013 Towne AllPoints, Santa Ana, CA
All Rights Reserved
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All advertising before Claude Hopkins flows into it . . . and all advertising after
Claude Hopkins flows out of it
David Ogilvy says Scientific Advertising changed his life
Someone is always reprinting Claude Hopkins.
In 1923 he wrote this timeless guide, which was
originally published by the advertising agency of Lord
& Thomas (Foote, Cone & Belding Worldwide today).
Almost thirty years later Scientific Advertising was re-
published by eminent researcher and devotee of
precision marketing Alfred Politz.
Politz reasoned Hopkins’ presented “the most
concentrated wealth of useful discoveries” and
“present-day advertising research has a long way to
go before it reaches the level of Claude Hopkins’
contributions to efficient advertising.”
He was the outstanding copywriter and marketing
strategist of his time, making $100,000 and more a
year writing ads when that kind of money was
important (even to the U.S. Treasury).
In an era when the science was scarce, the electronic
data and ‘push-button’ delivery non-existent, Hopkins’
insights to what works are too valuable, too eternal, to
be forgotten.
Hopkins invented multiple marketing methods (i.e.
preemptive advertising). His tireless efforts refined
concepts like couponing, premiums, free samples, mail
order and copy testing.
Modern marketing greats who are known for their
million and billion dollar results—Jay Abraham, Dan
Kennedy, Gary Halbert, Ted Nicholas and others—
incorporate Hopkins’ work.
The reader will find himself alternately shaking his
head in disagreement, ‘tsk tsking’ where Hopkins
seems ‘too simple’ . . . then applauding vigorously at
his magic.
Some will be annoyed with Hopkins’ antiquated
presentation, and impressed with his short, staccato
sentences—Hopkins’ signature salesmanship in print.
FOREWORD How Scientific Advertising gives you an unfair advantage
Salesmanship in Print
There is much to be learned from
Hopkins’ style of writing.
Look at the appeals he structures in the ad section (p. 42). No hype.
The reason Claude’s ads could run today is because of their timeless simplicity
and direct approach.
Referencing his work before you start gives you an unfair advantage for any promotion.
There is much to be learned from Hopkins’ style of writing
Hopkins is outdated and completely new
A surefire way to benefit from Claude Hopkins is to
study his writing. The reason Claude’s ads could run
today is because of their timeless simplicity, direct
approach and structured appeals. Notice his words for
the ‘common man’. Headlines that are hype-free.
For the reader who wants to write better classified
ads, landing pages, e-mails or direct mail sales copy,
referencing Claude’s work before you start gives you
an unfair advantage.
At the turn of the 20th Century, Claude Hopkins was a
cautious pioneer, one who blazed new trails in
accountable marketing. Neophytes and experts alike
will find this Architect of Direct Response teachings
stimulating, helpful, enchanting—regardless of era.
So here we are again, reprinting Scientific Advertising
with an edition that includes Cliff Note commentary for
faster absorption, a Towne employee recipe to keep
your brainwaves happy and detailed samples of
Claude’s sought-after ads to emulate.
You hold in your hands the catalyst to selling anything
in any medium.
Enjoy,
We believe in the power of direct.
In this book
1. How Advertising Laws Are Established ............................................... 7
2. Just Salesmanship ............................................................................... 12
3. Offer Service ....................................................................................... 18
4. Mail Order Advertising – What It Teaches ........................................... 21
5. Headlines ........................................................................................... 28
6. Psychology ......................................................................................... 32
7. Being Specific .................................................................................... 39
8. Tell Your Full Story ............................................................................. 43
Feature: Hopkins Rare Ad Collection ........................................................ 47
9. Art in Advertising ............................................................................... 59
10. Things Too Costly ............................................................................... 63
11. Information ......................................................................................... 68
12. Strategy ............................................................................................. 72
13. Use of Samples ................................................................................... 78
14. Getting Distribution ............................................................................ 84
15. Test Campaigns .................................................................................. 89
16. Leaning on Dealers ............................................................................. 94
17. Individuality ....................................................................................... 98
18. Negative Advertising ........................................................................ 100
19. Letter Writing ................................................................................... 103
20. A Name That Helps ............................................................................ 106
21. Good Business................................................................................... 109
Feature : Claude Hopkins Brand Cheat Sheet........................................... 112
About Towne AllPoints .......................................................................... 113
GOOD EATS: Team Towne Recipe Collection ........................................ 114
1 l How Advertising Laws Are Established
Chapter 1
How Advertising Laws Are Established
The time has come when advertising has in some hands reached the status
of a science. It is based on fixed principles and is reasonably exact. The
causes and effects have been analyzed until they are well understood. The
correct methods of procedure have been proved and established. We know
what is most effective, and we act on basic laws.
Advertising, once a gamble, has thus become, under able direction, one of
the safest of business ventures. Certainly no other enterprise with comparable
possibilities need involve so little risk.
Therefore this book deals, not with theories and opinions, but with well-
proved principles and facts. It is written as a text book for students and a safe
guide for advertisers. Every statement has been weighed. The book is
confined to established fundamentals. If we enter any realms of uncertainty
we shall carefully denote them.
The present status of advertising is due to many reasons. Much national
advertising has long been handled by large organizations known as
advertising agencies. Some of these agencies, in their hundreds of
campaigns, have tested and compared thousands of plans and ideas. The
results have been watched and recorded, so no lessons have been lost.
Such agencies employ a high grade of talent. None but able and
experienced men can meet the requirements in national advertising. Working
in co-operation, learning from each other and from each new undertaking,
some of these men develop into masters.
Ruthless testing has transformed
advertising from a gamble to one
of the safest of business ventures.
1 l How Advertising Laws Are Established
Individuals may come and go, but they leave their records and ideas
behind them. These become a part of the organization’s equipment, and a
guide to all who follow. Thus, in the course of decades, such agencies become
storehouses of advertising experiences, proved principles, and methods. The
larger agencies also come into intimate contact with experts in every
department of business. Their clients are usually dominating concerns. So
they see the results of countless methods and policies. They become a
clearing house for everything pertaining to merchandising. Nearly every
selling question which arises in business is accurately answered by many
experiences.
Under these conditions, where they long exist, advertising and
merchandising become exact sciences. Every course is charted. The compass
of accurate knowledge directs the shortest, safest, cheapest course to any
destination.
We learn the principles and prove them by repeated tests. This is done
through keyed advertising, by traced returns… We compare one way with
many others, backward and forward, and record the results. When one
method invariably proves best, that method becomes a fixed principle.
Mail order advertising is traced down to the fraction of a penny. The cost
per reply and cost per dollar of sale show up with utter exactness.
One ad is compared with another, one method with another. Headlines,
settings, sizes, arguments and pictures are compared. To reduce the cost of
results even one per cent means much in some mail order advertising. So no
guesswork is permitted. One must know what is best. Thus mail order
advertising first established many of our basic laws.
Advertising and merchandising
are exact sciences.
You must become an
expert tester to succeed with
your marketing.
Tracing mail order down to a
fraction of a penny built the foundation for modern marketing.
1 l How Advertising Laws Are Established
In lines where direct returns are impossible we compare one town with
another. Scores of methods may be compared in this way, measured by cost
of sales.
But the most common way is by use of the coupon. We offer a sample, a
book, a free package or something to induce direct replies. Thus we learn the
amount of action which each ad engenders.
But those figures are not final. One ad may bring too many worthless
replies, another replies that are valuable. So our final conclusions are always
based on cost per customer or cost per dollar of sale.
These coupon plans are dealt with further in the chapter on “Test
Campaigns.” Here we explain only how we employ them to discover
advertising principles.
In a large agency coupon returns are watched and recorded on hundreds
of different lines. In a single line they are sometimes recorded on thousands of
separate ads. Thus we test everything pertaining to advertising. We answer
nearly every possible question by multitudinous traced returns.
Some things we learn in this way apply only to particular lines. But even
those supply basic principles for analogous undertakings.
Others apply to all lines. They become fundamentals for advertising in
general. They are universally applied. No wise advertiser will ever depart
from those unvarying laws.
We propose in this book to deal with those fundamentals, those universal
principles. To teach only established technique. There is that technique in
advertising, as in all art, science and mechanics. And it is, as in all lines, a
basic essential.
Coupons, samples and premiums are excellent response-driven
devices – you’ll either get a
response or a learning.
Universal principles govern the
laws of marketing:
Heed them.
1 l How Advertising Laws Are Established
The lack of those fundamentals has been the main trouble with advertising
of the past. Each worker was a law to himself. All previous knowledge, all
progress in the line, was a closed book to him. It was like a man trying to build
a modern locomotive without first ascertaining what others had done. It was
like a Columbus starting out to find an undiscovered land.
Men were guided by whims and fancies—vagrant, changing breezes. They
rarely arrived at their port. When they did—by accident—it was by a long
roundabout course.
Each early mariner in this sea mapped his own separate course. There
were no charts to guide him. Not a lighthouse marked a harbor, not a buoy
showed a reef. The wrecks were unrecorded, so countless ventures came to
grief on the same rocks and shoals.
Advertising was then a gamble—a speculation of the rashest sort. One
man’s guess on the proper course was as likely to be as good as another’s.
There were no safe pilots, because few sailed the same course twice.
That condition has been corrected. Now the only uncertainties pertain to
people and to products, not to methods. It is hard to measure human
idiosyncrasies, the preferences and prejudices, the likes and dislikes that
exist. We cannot say that an article will be popular, but we know how to find
out very quickly. We do know how to sell it in the most effective way.
Ventures may fail, but the failures are not disasters. Losses, when they
occur, are but trifling. And the causes are factors which have nothing to do
with the advertising.
Advertising has flourished under these new conditions. It has multiplied in
volume, in prestige and respect. The perils have been almost eliminated. The
The uninitiated marketer advertises on whims.
No campaign is 100%
predictable; research done in a
certain way is the key before writing a word.
1 l How Advertising Laws Are Established
results have increased many fold. Just because the gamble has become a
science, the speculation a very conservative business.
These facts should be recognized by all. This is no proper field for
sophistry or theory, or for any other will-o’-the-wisp. The blind leading the
blind is ridiculous. It is pitiful in a field with such vast possibilities. Success is a
rarity, maximum success an impossibility, unless one is guided by laws as
immutable as the law of gravitation.
So our main purpose here is to set down those laws, and to tell you how to
prove them for yourself. After them come a myriad variations. No two
advertising campaigns are ever conducted on lines that are identical.
Individuality is an essential. Imitation is a reproach. But those variable things
which depend on ingenuity have no place in a text book on advertising. This
is for ground-work only.
Our hope is to foster advertising through a better understanding. To place
it on a business basis. To have it recognized as among the safest, surest
ventures which lead to large returns.
Thousands of conspicuous successes show its possibilities. Their variety
points out its almost unlimited scope. Yet thousands who need it—who can
never attain their deserts without it—still look upon its accomplishments as
somewhat accidental.
That was so, but it is not so now. We hope that this book will throw some
new lights on the subject.
Follow what you learn here for large returns on your marketing
investment.
2 l Just Salesmanship
Chapter 2
Just Salesmanship
To properly understand advertising or to learn even its rudiments one
must start with the right conception. Advertising is salesmanship. Its
principles are the principles of salesmanship. Successes and failures in both
lines are due to like causes. Thus every advertising question should be
answered by the salesman’s standards.
Let us emphasize that point. The only purpose of advertising is to make
sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.
It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It
is not primarily to aid your other salesmen.
Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other
salesmen. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good salesmen
do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.
The difference is only in degree. Advertising is multiplied salesmanship. It
may appeal to thousands while the salesman talks to one. It involves a
corresponding cost. Some people spend $10 per word on an average
advertisement. Therefore every ad should be a super-salesman.
A salesman’s mistake may cost little. An advertising mistake may cost a
thousand times as much. Be more cautious, more exacting, therefore.
A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre
advertising affects all of your trade.
Advertising exists for one reason: to sell something.
Forget making an image: ask
yourself, “How can I get a return?”
Make every ad a
super-salesman.
2 l Just Salesmanship
Many think of advertising as ad-writing. Literary qualifications have no
more to do with it than oratory has with salesmanship.
One must be able to express himself briefly, clearly and convincingly, just
as a salesman must. But fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique
literary style. They take attention from the subject. They reveal the hook. Any
studied attempt to sell, if apparent, creates corresponding
That is so in personal salesmanship as in salesmanship-in-print. Fine
talkers are rarely good salesmen. They inspire buyers with the fear of over-
influence. They create the suspicion that an effort is made to sell them on
other lines than merit.
Successful salesmen are rarely good speech makers. They have few
oratorical graces. They are plain and sincere men who know their customers
and know their lines. So it is in ad-writing.
Many of the ablest men in advertising are graduate salesmen. The best we
know have been house-to-house canvassers. They may know little of
grammar, nothing of rhetoric, but they know how to use words that convince.
There is one simple and right way to answer many advertising questions.
Ask yourself, “Would this help a salesman sell the goods?” “Would it help me
sell them if I met the buyer in person?”
A fair answer to those questions avoids countless mistakes. But when one
tries to show off, or does things merely to please himself, he is little likely to
strike a chord which leads people to spend money.
Some argue for slogans, some like clever conceits. Would you use them in
personal salesmanship? Can you imagine a customer whom such things would
impress? If not, don’t rely on them for selling in print.
Write in the language of your prospect . . . at a
6th grade level.
You must be understood
to be bought.
Are the words in your ads
something you would say to your
prospect face-to-face to help him
make a buy decision?
Clever advertising rarely works.
Most clever ads are simply lazy—
or unskilled—copywriting.
2 l Just Salesmanship
Some say, “Be very brief. People will read but little.” Would you say that to
a salesman? With a prospect standing before him, would you confine him to
any certain number of words? That would be an unthinkable handicap.
So in advertising. The only readers we get are people whom our subject
interests. No one reads ads for amusement, long or short. Consider them as
prospects standing before you, seeking for information. Give them enough to
get action.
Some advocate large type and big headlines. Yet they do not admire
salesmen who talk in loud voices. People read all they care to read in 8-point
type. Our magazines and newspapers are printed in that type. Folks are
accustomed to it. Anything larger is like loud conversation. It gains no
attention worth while. It may not be offensive, but it is useless and wasteful. It
multiplies the cost of your story. And to many it seems loud and blatant.
Others look for something queer and unusual. They want ads distinctive in
style or illustration. Would you want that in a salesman? Do not men who act
and dress in normal ways make a far better impression?
Some insist on dressy ads. That is all right to a certain degree, but it is
quite unimportant. Some poorly dressed ads, like poorly dressed men, prove
to be excellent salesmen. Over-dress in either is a fault.
So with countless questions. Measure them by salesmen’s standards, not
by amusement standards. Ads are not written to entertain. When they do,
those entertainment seekers are little likely to be the people whom you want.
That is one of the greatest advertising faults. Ad-writers abandon their
parts. They forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of
sales, they seek applause.
Interested prospects read long ads—as long as the copy is
interesting.
Product answers =
Prospect action.
Advertising = salesmanship in
print. Would you dress your salesman up like a clown?
Then don’t use nonsensical typeface and illustrations.
2 l Just Salesmanship
When you plan and prepare an advertisement, keep before you a typical
buyer. Your subject, your headline has gained his or her attention. Then in
everything be guided by what you would do if you met the buyer face-to-face.
If you are a normal man and a good salesman you will then do your level best.
Don’t think of people in the mass. That gives you a blurred view. Think of a
typical individual, man or woman, who is likely to want what you sell. Don’t try
to be amusing. Money spending is a serious matter. Don’t boast, for all people
resent it. Don’t try to show off. Do just what you think a good salesman should
do with a half-sold person before him.
Some advertising men go out in person and sell to people before they plan
or write an ad. One of the ablest of them has spent weeks on one article,
selling from house to house. In this way they learn the reactions from different
forms of argument and approach. They learn what possible buyers want and
the factors which don’t appeal. It is quite customary to interview hundreds of
possible customers.
Others send out questionnaires to learn the attitude of buyers. In some way
all must learn how to strike responsive chords. Guesswork is very expensive.
The maker of an advertised article knows the manufacturing side and
probably the dealer’s side. But this very knowledge often leads him astray in
respect to consumers. His interests are not their interests.
The advertising man studies the consumer. He tries to place himself in the
position of the buyer. His success largely depends on doing that to the
exclusion of everything else.
This book will contain no more important chapter than this one on
salesmanship. The reason for most of the non-successes in advertising is
Advertising to a target audience is a myth: envision your prospect
face-to-face and write to that
person.
Think like the consumer.
Buyer desire can never be forced
or convinced; it can only be
channeled.
2 l Just Salesmanship
trying to sell people what they do not want. But next to that comes the lack of
true salesmanship.
Ads are planned and written with some utterly wrong conception. They are
written to please the seller. The interests of the buyer are forgotten. One can
never sell goods profitably, in person or in print, when that attitude exists.
The wrong concept
kills the sale.
Writing to please the seller is the
wrong concept.
Nettie
Sr. Sales Executive
HERSHMAN #1 Sales Blunder
Empower your sales by empowering your
prospects.
Resistance goes through the roof when
you are too direct too early in the sales
cycle… i.e.”Buy now!” Selling is problem
solving. And problems by definition imply failure.
Essentially, you’re promising to take your
prospect from failure to success with your offer. It’s your job as a marketer to look
at the products and services you sell and
discover the connection.
Ultimately, it’s also your job to build up
your prospect’s self-esteem through your
communication.
You are not selling things. You are not even selling results. You are selling that
feeling of self-worth… the seed of wishes
fulfilled.
Meet Nettie
Twenty-five years in marketing with over 100
client credits. Former stints at Harte-Hanks,
Pacific Comm., Creative Ad, and Advantage Mailing. Trains Towne’s sales team in finer
‘What’s In It For Me?’ points of direct mail,
inventory control, process flow, and fulfillment.
Towne Touch: Plastic overlay saves healthcare client $5,000;
hospital extends mail out additional 6 months.
Ask Nettie anything: www.linkedin.com/pub/nettie-ershman/b/2ab/ba3/
Time At Towne: 2 years
3 l Offer Service
Chapter 3
Offer Service
Remember that the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They
care nothing about your interest or your profit. They seek service for
themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in
advertising. Ads say in effect, “Buy my brand. Give me the trade you give to
others. Let me have the money.” That is not a popular appeal.
The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. Often they do not quote a
price. They do not say that dealers handle the product.
The ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information.
They cite advantages to users. Perhaps they offer a sample, or to buy the first
package, or to send something on approval, so the customer may prove the
claims without any cost or risk.
Some of these ads seem altruistic. But they are based on a knowledge of
human nature. The writers know how people are led to buy.
Here again is salesmanship. The good salesman does not merely cry a
name. He doesn’t say, “Buy my article.” He pictures the customer’s side of his
service until the natural result is to buy.
A brush maker has some 2,000 canvassers who sell brushes from house to
house. He is enormously successful in a line which would seem very difficult.
And it would be if his men asked the housewives to buy.
But they don’t. They go to the door and say, “I was sent here to give you a
brush. I have samples here and I want you to take your choice.”
Prospects are naturally selfish; appeal to your prospect’s
self-interest.
The best ads are based on ‘being
of service’ and provide the
prospect with wanted
information.
Giving away
samples works.
3 l Offer Service
The housewife is all smiles and attention. In picking out one brush she sees
several she wants. She is also anxious to reciprocate the gift. So the salesman
gets an order.
Another concern sells coffee, etc., by wagons in some 500 cities. The man
drops in with a half-pound of coffee and says, “Accept this package and try it.
I’ll come back in a few days to ask how you like it.”
Even when he comes back he doesn’t ask for an order. He explains that he
wants to send the woman a fine kitchen utensil. It isn’t free, but if she likes the
coffee he will credit five cents on each pound she buys until she has paid for
the article. Always some service.
The maker of an electric sewing machine motor found advertising difficult.
So, on good advice, he ceased soliciting a purchase. He offered to send to any
home, through any dealer, a motor for one week’s use. With it would come a
man to show how to operate it. “Let us help you for a week without cost or
obligation,” said the ad. Such an offer was resistless, and about nine in ten of
the trials led to sales.
So in many, many lines. Cigar makers send out boxes to anyone and say,
“Smoke ten, then keep them or return them, as you wish.”
Makers of books, typewriters, washing machines, kitchen cabinets,
vacuum sweepers, etc., send out their products without any prepayment. They
say, “Use them a week, then do as you wish.” Practically all merchandise sold
by mail is sent subject to return.
These are all common principles of salesmanship. The most ignorant
peddler applies them. Yet the salesman-in-print very often forgets them. He
talks about his interests. He blazons a name, as though that was of any
Be a customer-delighter.
Put your product
in the hands of your
prospect with a trial offer.
3 l Offer Service
importance. His phrase is “Drive people to the stores,” and that is his attitude
in everything he says.
People can be coaxed but not driven. Whatever they do they do to please
themselves. Many fewer mistakes would be made in advertising if these facts
were never forgotten.
Never force.
4 l Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
Chapter 4
Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
The severest test of an advertising man is in selling goods by mail. But that
is a school from which he must graduate before he can hope for success.
There cost and result are immediately apparent. False theories melt away like
snowflakes in the sun. The advertising is profitable or it is not, clearly on the
face of returns. Figures which do not lie tell one at once the merits of an ad.
This puts men on their mettle. All guesswork is eliminated. Every mistake
is conspicuous. One quickly loses his conceit by learning how often his
judgment errs—often nine times in ten.
There one learns that advertising must be done on a scientific basis to have
any fair chance at success. And he learns how every wasted dollar adds to the
cost of results.
Here he is taught efficiency and economy under a master who can’t be
fooled. Then, and then only, is he apt to apply the same principles and keys to
all advertising.
A man was selling a five-dollar article. The replies from his ad cost him 85
cents. Another man submitted an ad which he thought better. The replies cost
$14.20 each. Another man submitted an ad which for two years brought
replies at an average of 41 cents each.
Consider that difference, on 250,000 replies per year. Think how valuable
was the man who cut the cost in two. Think what it would have meant to have
continued that $14.20 ad without any key on returns.
The numbers don’t lie:
Selling goods by mail is the ultimate test of the advertising
professional.
Online into offline: What Claude
couldn’t do, you can.
Test your concepts, headlines & copy online to see what works.
Then lay your money down into
mail and television for even higher returns.
4 l Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
Yet there are thousands of advertisers who do just that. They spend large
sums on a guess. And they are doing what that man did—paying for sales from
2 to 35 times what they need cost.
A study of mail order advertising reveals many things worth learning. It is
a prime subject for study. In the first place, if continued, you know that it pays.
It is therefore good advertising as applied to that line.
The probability is that the ad has resulted from many traced comparisons.
It is therefore the best advertising yet discovered for that line.
Study those ads with respect. There is proved advertising, not theoretical.
It will not deceive you. The lessons it teaches are principles which wise men
apply to all advertising.
Mail order advertising is always set in small type. It is usually set in smaller
type than ordinary print. That economy of space is universal. So it proves
conclusively that larger type does not pay.
Remember that when you double your space by doubling the size of your
type. The ad may still be profitable. But traced returns have proved that you
are paying a double price for sales.
In mail order advertising there is no waste of space. Every line is utilized.
Borders are rarely used. Remember that when you are tempted to leave
valuable space unoccupied.
In mail order advertising there is no palaver. There is no boasting, save of
super-service. There is no useless talk. There is no attempt at entertainment.
There is nothing to amuse.
Most marketers don’t test . . . to their own peril.
Mail order ads aren’t
intended to win design awards.
Every pica is worth
dollars in the bank.
4 l Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
Mail order advertising usually contains a coupon. That is there to get some
action from the converts partly made. It is there to cut out as a reminder of
something the reader has decided to do.
Mail order advertisers know that readers forget. They are reading a
magazine of interest. They may be absorbed in a story. A large percentage of
people who read an ad and decide to act will forget that decision in five
minutes. The mail order advertiser knows that waste by tests, and he does not
propose to accept it. So he inserts that reminder to be cut out, and it turns up
when the reader is ready to act.
In mail order advertising the pictures are always to the point. They are
salesmen in themselves. They earn the space they occupy. The size is gauged
by their importance. The picture of a dress one is trying to sell may occupy
much space. Less important things get smaller spaces.
Pictures in ordinary advertising may teach little. They probably result from
whims. But pictures in mail order advertising may form half the cost of selling.
And you may be sure that everything about them has been decided by many
comparative tests.
Before you use useless pictures, merely to decorate or interest, look over
some mail order ads. Mark what their verdict is.
A man advertised an incubator to be sold by mail. Type ads with right
headlines brought excellent returns. But he conceived the idea that a striking
picture would increase those returns. So he increased his space 50 per cent to
add a row of chickens in silhouette.
It did make a striking ad, but his cost per reply was increased by exactly
50 per cent. The new ad, costing one-half more for every insertion, brought
not one added sale.
Coupons are a mailer’s best friend..
Copy drives design.
Nix pictures that don’t further the sale.
4 l Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
The man learned that incubator buyers were practical people. They were
looking for attractive offers, not for pictures.
Think of the countless untraced campaigns where a whim of that kind costs
half the advertising money without a penny of return. And it may go on year
after year.
Mail order advertising tells a complete story if the purpose is to make an
immediate sale. You see no limitations there on amount of copy.
The motto there is, “The more you tell the more you sell.” And it has never
failed to prove out so in any test we know.
Sometimes the advertiser uses small ads, sometimes large ads. None are
too small to tell a reasonable story. But an ad twice larger brings twice the
returns. A four-times-larger ad brings four times the returns, and usually some
in addition.
But this occurs only when the larger space is utilized as well as the small
space. Set half-page copy in a page space and you double the cost of returns.
We have seen many a test prove that.
Look at an ad of the Mead Cycle Company—a typical mail order ad. These
have been running for many years. The ads are unchanging. Mr. Mead told
the writer that not for $10,000 would he change a single word in his ads.
For many years he compared one ad with another. And the ads you see
today are the final result of all those experiments. Note the picture he uses,
the headlines, the economy of space, the small type. Those ads are as near
perfect for their purpose as an ad can be.
So with any other mail order ad which has long continued. Every feature,
every word and picture teaches advertising at its best. You may not like them.
The more you tell,
the more you sell.
Tell a complete story.
Mail order ads
[advertorials] can pull for years.
4 l Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
You may say they are unattractive, crowded, hard to read—anything you will.
But the test of results has proved those ads the best salesmen those lines have
yet discovered. And they certainly pay.
Mail order advertising is the court of last resort. You may get the same
instruction, if you will, by keying other ads. But mail order ads are models.
They are selling goods profitably in a difficult way.
It is far harder to get mail orders than to send buyers to the stores. It is
hard to sell goods which can’t be seen. Ads which do that are excellent
examples of what advertising should be.
We cannot often follow all the principles of mail order advertising, though
we know we should. The advertiser forces a compromise. Perhaps pride in
our ads has an influence. But every departure from those principles adds to
our selling cost. Therefore it is always a question of what we are willing to pay
for our frivolities.
We can at least know what we pay. We can make keyed comparisons, one
ad with another. Whenever we do we invariably find that the nearer we get to
proved mail order copy the more customers we get for our money.
This is another important chapter. Think it over. What real difference is
there between inducing a customer to order by mail or order from his dealer?
Why should the methods of salesmanship differ?
They should not. When they do, it is for one of two reasons. Either the
advertiser does not know what the mail order advertiser knows. He is
advertising blindly. Or he is deliberately sacrificing a percentage of his
returns to gratify some desire.
There is some apology for that, just as there is for fine offices and
buildings. Most of us can afford to do something for pride and opinion. But let
Mail order advertising is the court of last resort.
It’s far harder to get orders by
mail than in a store.
There’s always a sound
reason why your advertising
doesn’t work.
4 l Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches
us know what we are doing. Then, if our advertising fails to bring the wanted
returns, let us go back to our model—a good mail order ad—and eliminate
some of our waste.
Kevin
Business Solutions & Client Services Manager
MINDER 10.5 Costly Mail
Mistakes
#1 Mailing a job as a flat vs. as a letter
#2 Designing an unusually shaped mail piece w/o knowing postage ramifications
#3 Failure to weigh
#4 Poor data quality
#5 Personalization that runs afoul of USPS regulations
#6 Failure to check final folded thickness
#7 Wrong permit # or language on indicia
#8 Wrong service endorsement
#9 Failure to comply with Move Update
#10 Issues with address block label
#10.5 No in-house MERLIN
Let this be your checklist & save $$$.
Meet Kevin
Spends teen summers at Towne stuffing
envelopes and folding Morris the Cat tees.
Rejoins co. after community college graduation. Imprints team of 12 client service reps with his
‘special’ stamp for making complex mail easy.
Detailed down to the DNA with enchanting
Colombo personality.
Towne Touch: Spots error in client-provided
segmentation logic; wards off skewed ROI
catastrophe.
Ask Kevin anything:
www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-minder/9/74b/7a6
Time At Towne: 25 years
5 l Headlines
Chapter 5
Headlines
The difference between advertising and personal salesmanship lies
largely in personal contact. The salesman is there to demand attention. He
cannot well be ignored. The advertisement can be ignored.
But the salesman wastes much of his time on prospects whom he never can
hope to interest. He cannot pick them out. The advertisement is read only by
interested people who, by their own volition, study what we have to say.
The purpose of a headline is to pick out people you can interest. You wish
to talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, “Hey there, Bill
Jones” to get the right person’s attention.
So in an advertisement. What you have will interest certain people only,
and for certain reasons. You care only for those people. Then create a
headline which will hail those people only.
Perhaps a blind headline or some clever conceit will attract many times as
many. But they may consist mostly of impossible subjects for what you have to
offer. And the people you are after may never realize that the ad refers to
something they may want.
Headlines on ads are like headlines on news items. Nobody reads a whole
newspaper. One is interested in financial news, one in political, one in
society, one in cookery, one in sports, etc. There are whole pages in any
newspaper which we never scan at all. Yet other people may turn directly to
those pages.
People naturally read anything they’re interested in—
including advertising.
Your headline has
one purpose: to grab your
prospect’s attention.
Readers scan; headlines are great qualifiers.
5 l Headlines
We pick out what we wish to read by headlines, and we don’t want those
headlines misleading. The writing of headlines is one of the greatest
journalistic arts. They either conceal or reveal an interest.
Suppose a newspaper article stated that a certain woman was the most
beautiful in the city. That article would be of intense interest to that woman
and her friends. But neither she nor her friends would ever read it if the
headline was “Egyptian Psychology.”
So in advertising. It is commonly said that people do not read
advertisements. That is silly, of course. We who spend millions in advertising
and watch the returns marvel at the readers we get. Again and again we see
20 per cent of all the readers of a newspaper cut out a certain coupon.
But people do not read ads for amusement. They don’t read ads which, at a
glance, seem to offer nothing interesting. A double-page ad on women’s
dresses will not gain a glance from a man. Nor will a shaving cream ad from a
woman.
Always bear these facts in mind. People are hurried. The average person
worth cultivating has too much to read. They skip three-fourths of the reading
matter which they pay to get. They are not going to read your business talk
unless you make it worth their while and let the headline show it.
People will not be bored in print. They may listen politely at a dinner table
to boasts and personalities, life histories, etc. But in print they choose their
own companions, their own subjects. They want to be amused or benefited.
They want economy, beauty, labor saving, good things to eat and wear. There
may be products which interest them more than anything else in a magazine.
But they will never know it unless the headline or the picture tells them.
The writer of this chapter spends far more time on headlines than on
writing. He often spends hours on a single headline. Often scores of headlines
Never mislead your reader with your advertising.
Its headline is an ad’s biggest attractor-factor.
5 l Headlines
are discarded before the right one is selected. For the entire return from an
ad depends on attracting the right sort of readers. The best of salesmanship
has no chance whatever unless we get a hearing.
The vast difference in headlines is shown by keyed returns which this book
advocates. The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in
its returns. It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns
from five to ten times over.
So we compare headlines until we know what sort of appeal pays best.
That differs in every line, of course.
The writer has before him keyed returns on nearly two thousand headlines
used on a single product. The story in these ads is nearly identical. But the
returns vary enormously, due to the headlines. So with every keyed return in
our record appears the headline that we used.
Thus we learn what type of headline has the most wide-spread appeal. The
product has many uses. It fosters beauty. It prevents disease. It aids daintiness
and cleanliness. We learn to exactness which quality most of our readers
seek.
That does not mean that we neglect the others. One sort of appeal may
bring half the returns of another, yet be important enough to be profitable.
We overlook no field that pays. But we know what proportion of our ads
should, in the headline, attract any certain class.
For this same reason we employ a vast variety of ads. If we are using
twenty magazines we may use twenty separate ads. This because circulations
overlap, and because a considerable percentage of people are attracted by
each of several forms of approach. We wish to reach them all.
Write scores of headlines before choosing the best one.
Test headlines.
Running the same ad in various
magazines? Test various approaches.
5 l Headlines
On a soap, for instance, the headline “Keep Clean” might attract a very
small percentage. It is too commonplace. So might the headline, “No animal
fats.” People may not care much about that. The headline, “It floats” might
prove interesting. But a headline referring to beauty or complexion might
attract many times as many.
An automobile ad might refer in the headline to a good universal joint. It
might fall flat, because so few buyers think of universal joints. The same ad,
with a headline “The Sportiest of Sport Bodies,” might outpull the other by fifty
to one.
This is enough to suggest the importance of headlines. Anyone who keys
ads will be amazed at the difference. The appeals we like best will rarely
prove best, because we do not know enough people to average up their
desires. So we learn on each line by experiment.
But back of all lie fixed principles. You are presenting an ad to millions.
Among them is a percentage, small or large, whom you hope to interest. Go
after that percentage and try to strike the chord that responds. If you are
advertising corsets, men and children don’t interest you. If you are
advertising cigars, you have no use for non-smokers. Razors won’t attract
women, rouge will not interest men.
Don’t think that those millions will read your ads to find out if your product
interests. They will decide by a glance—by your headline or your pictures.
Address the people you seek, and them only.
Selling to everyone
is a mistake.
Write ads that resonate with prospect desire.
6 l Psychology
Chapter 6
Psychology
The competent advertising man must understand psychology. The more he
knows about it the better. He must learn that certain effects lead to certain
reactions, and use that knowledge to increase results and avoid mistakes.
Human nature is perpetual. In most respects it is the same today as in the
time of Caesar. So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring. You
will never need to unlearn what you learn about them.
We learn, for instance, that curiosity is one of the strongest of human
incentives. We employ it whenever we can. Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice
were made successful largely through curiosity. “Grains puffed to 8 times
normal size.” “Foods shot from guns.” “125 million steam explosions caused
in every kernel.” These foods were failures before that factor was discovered.
We learn that cheapness is not a strong appeal. Americans are
extravagant. They want bargains but not cheapness. They want to feel that
they can afford to eat and have and wear the best. Treat them as though they
could not and they resent your attitude.
We learn that people judge largely by price. They are not experts. In the
British National Gallery is a painting which is announced in the catalog to have
cost $750,000. Most people at first pass it by at a glance. Then later they get
farther on in the catalog and learn what the painting cost. They return then
and surround it.
A department store advertised at one Easter time a $1,000 hat, and the
floor could not hold the women who came to see it.
Competent advertisers understand philosophy.
Human nature
doesn’t change.
Curiosity is a strong
incentive.
People judge largely
on price, yet ‘cheapness’ is not a strong appeal.
6 l Psychology
We often employ this factor in psychology. Perhaps we are advertising a
valuable formula. To merely say that would not be impressive. So we state—as
a fact—that we paid $100,000 for that formula. That statement when tried has
won a wealth of respect.
Many articles are sold under guarantee—so commonly sold that
guarantees have ceased to be impressive. But one concern made a fortune by
offering a dealer’s signed warrant. The dealer to whom one paid his money
agreed in writing to pay it back if asked. Instead of a far-away stranger, a
neighbor gave the warrant. The results have led many to try that plan, and it
has always proved effective.
Many have advertised, “Try it for a week. If you don’t like it we’ll return
your money.” Then someone conceived the idea of sending goods without
any money down, and saying, “Pay in a week if you like them.” That proved
many times as impressive.
One great advertising man stated the difference in this way: “Two men
came to me, each offering me a horse. Both made equal claims. They were
good horses, kind and gentle. A child could drive them. One man said, ‘Try
the horse for a week. If my claims are not true, come back for your money.’
The other man also said, ‘Try the horse for a week.’ But he added, ‘Come and
pay me then.’ I naturally bought the second man’s horse.”
Now countless things—cigars, typewriters, washing machines, books,
etc.—are sent out in this way on approval. And we find that people are honest.
The losses are very small.
An advertiser offered a set of books to business men. The advertising was
unprofitable, so he consulted another expert. The ads were impressive. The
offer seemed attractive. “But,” said the second man, “let us add one little
touch which I have found effective. Let us offer to put the buyer’s name in gilt
lettering on each book.” That was done, and with scarcely another change in
How you phrase
your offer counts.
6 l Psychology
the ads they sold some hundreds of thousands of books. Through some
peculiar kink in human psychology that name in gilt gave much added value
to the books.
Many send out small gifts, like memorandum books, to customers and
prospects. They get very small results. One man sent out a letter to the effect
that he had a leather-covered book with the man’s name on it. It was waiting
for him and would be sent on request. The form of request was enclosed, and
it also asked for certain information. That information indicated lines on which
the man might be sold.
Nearly all men, it was found, filled out that request and supplied the
information. When a man knows that something belongs to him—something
with his name on—he will make the effort to get it, even though the thing is a
trifle.
In the same way it is found that an offer limited to a certain class of people
is far more effective than a general offer. For instance, an offer limited to
veterans of the war. Or to members of a lodge or sect. Or to executives. Those
who are entitled to any seeming advantage will go a long way not to lose that
advantage.
An advertiser suffered much from substitution. He said, “Look out for
substitutes,” “Be sure you get this brand,” etc., with no effect. Those were
selfish appeals.
Then he said, “Try our rivals’ too”—said it in his headlines. He invited
comparisons and showed that he did not fear them. That corrected the
situation. Buyers were careful to get the brand so conspicuously superior that
its maker could court a trial of the rest.
Two advertisers offered food products nearly identical. Both offered a full-
size package as an introduction. But one gave his package free. The other
People love to see their name
in gilt.
Personalizing works.
Call out your
prospect by name.
6 l Psychology
bought the package. A coupon was good at any store for a package, for which
the maker paid retail price.
The first advertiser failed and the second succeeded. The first even lost a
large part of the trade he had. He cheapened his product by giving a 15-cent
package away. It is hard to pay for an article which has once been free. It is
like paying railroad fare after traveling on a pass.
The other gained added respect for his article by paying retail price to let
the user try it. An article good enough for the maker to buy is good enough for
the user to buy. It is vastly different to pay 15 cents to let you try an article
than to simply say “It’s free.”
So with sampling. Hand an unwanted product to a housewife and she pays
it slight respect. She is in no mood to see its virtues. But get her to ask for a
sample after reading your story, and she is in a very different position. She
knows your claims. She is interested in them, else she would not act. And she
expects to find the qualities you told.
There is a great deal in mental impression. Submit five articles exactly
alike and five people may each choose one of them. But point out in one some
qualities to notice and everyone will find them. The five people then will all
choose the same article.
If people can be made sick or well by mental impressions, they can be
made to favor a certain brand in that way. And that, on some lines, is the only
way to win them.
Two concerns, side by side, sold women’s clothing on installments. The
appeal, of course, was to poor girls who desired to dress better. One treated
them like poor girls; and made the bare business offer.
Write a good story. Invite the reader
to request a product sample at the end.
6 l Psychology
The other put a woman in charge—a motherly, dignified, capable woman.
They did business in her name. They used her picture. She signed all ads and
letters. She wrote to these girls like a friend. She knew herself what it meant to
a girl not to be able to dress her best. She had long sought a chance to supply
women good clothes and give them all season to pay. Now she was able to do
so, with the aid of the men behind her.
There was no comparison in those two appeals. It was not long before this
woman’s long-established next-door rival had to quit.
The backers of this business sold house furnishings on installments.
Sending out catalogs promiscuously did not pay. Offering long-time credit
often seems like a reflection.
But when a married woman bought garments from Mrs. ——, and paid as
agreed, they wrote to her something like this: “Mrs. ——, whom we know,
tells us that you are one of her good customers. She has dealt with you, she
says, and you do just as you agree. So we have opened with you a credit
account on our books, good any time you wish. When you want anything in
furnishings, just order it. Pay nothing in advance. We are glad to send it
without any investigation to a person recommended as you are.”
That was flattering. Naturally those people, when they wanted some
furniture, would order from that house.
There are endless phases to psychology. Some people know them by
instinct. Many of them are taught by experience. But we learn most of them
from others. When we see a winning method we note it down for use when
occasion offers.
Address your prospect
one-on-one with highly-personalized advertising.
6 l Psychology
These things are very important. An identical offer made in a different way
may bring multiplied returns. Somewhere in the mines of business
experience we must find the best method somehow. Human psychology is
at the heart of ‘why people buy’.
Jennyfer
Sales Executive
SICKLER Is This A Good Idea?
Choosing an unproven product and
mailing to an unproven list are classic marketing mistakes. See if your next big
idea has ‘market merit’ (without spending
a fortune on focus groups).
Let’s say you had a golf ball that beeped—
making it a cinch to find when you sliced your ball off into the woods.
What lists would you test: names of
prospective country club members;
magazine subscribers; warranty card lists?
Have your list broker pull mail order
buyers out of the SRDS. Then have her
chisel that list to recent, direct-mail generated names of multi-buyers of golf
equipment.
Ask if "hotline" names exist (buyers in the
last 30 days).
Use those names unless she happens to know of an even hotter list of names
who've bought golf equipment by mail.
Test the very hottest names available.
Meet Jennyfer
Lives by specialty data, hot mailing lists, and
workable solutions. Formerly with Inside
Prospects, VillageFax.com, infoUSA and datamart. Draws on customer service, buyer
advocacy and hard work ethics carved while at
Ralph’s Grocery Store (8 years).
Towne Touch: Takes anxious, first-time businesses to Every Door Direct Mail with better-
than-good (i.e. double-digit) results.
Ask Jennyfer anything: www.linkedin.com/pub/jennyfer-sickler/12/b04/b93/
Time At Towne: 2 years
7 l Being Specific
Chapter 7
Being Specific
Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water
from a duck. They leave no impression whatever. To say, “Best in the world,”
“Lowest prices in existence,” etc., are at best simply claiming the expected.
But superlatives of that sort are usually damaging. They suggest looseness of
expression, a tendency to exaggerate, a carelessness of truth. They lead
readers to discount all the statements that you make.
People recognize a certain license in selling talk as they do in poetry. A
man may say, “Supreme in quality” without seeming a liar, though one may
know that other brands are equally as good. One expects a salesman to put
his best foot forward, and excuses some exaggeration born of enthusiasm. But
just for that reason general statements count for little. And a man inclined to
superlatives must expect that his every statement will be taken with some
caution.
But a man who makes a specific claim is either telling the truth or a lie.
People do not expect an advertiser to lie. They know that he can’t lie in the
best mediums. The growing respect for advertising has largely come through
a growing regard for its truth.
So a definite statement is usually accepted. Actual figures are not generally
discounted. Specific facts, when stated, have their full weight and effect.
This is very important to consider in written or personal salesmanship. The
weight of an argument may often be multiplied by making it specific. Say that
a tungsten lamp gives more light than a carbon and you leave some doubt.
Specifics sell.
Be as specific as
possible with every
sentence in your advertising.
7 l Being Specific
Say that it gives three and one-third times the light and people realize that you
have made tests and comparisons.
A dealer may say, “Our prices have been reduced” without creating any
marked impression. But when he says, “Our prices have been reduced 25 per
cent” he gets the full value of his announcement.
A mail order advertiser sold women’s clothing to people of the poorer
classes. For years he used the slogan, “Lowest prices in America.” His rivals
all copied that. Then he guaranteed to undersell any other dealer. His rivals
did likewise. Soon those claims became common to every advertiser in his
line, and they became commonplace.
Then, under able advice, he changed his statement to “Our net profit is 3
per cent.” That was a definite statement and it proved very impressive. With
their volume of business it was evident that their prices must be minimum. No
one could be expected to do business on less than 3 per cent. The next year
their business made a sensational increase.
At one time in the automobile business there was a general impression that
profits were excessive. One well-advised advertiser came out with the
statement, “Our profit is 9 per cent.” Then he cited actual costs on the hidden
parts of a $1,500 car. They amounted to $735, without including anything one
could easily see. This advertiser made a great success along those lines at that
time.
Shaving soaps have long been advertised “Abundant lather,” “Does not
dry on the face,” “Acts quickly,” etc. One advertiser had as good a chance as
another to impress those claims.
Then a new maker came into the field. It was a tremendously difficult field,
for every customer had to be taken from someone else. He stated specific
facts. He said, “Multiplies itself in lather 250 times.” “Softens the beard in one
Use specific numbers.
Not ‘price reduction’ but
‘Our prices have been reduced 25%’
Being specific in
your advertising takes
time. The results are worth it.
7 l Being Specific
minute.” “Maintains its creamy fullness for ten minutes on the face.” “The final
result of testing and comparing 130 formulas.” Perhaps never in advertising
has there been a quicker and greater success in an equally difficult field.
Makers of safety razors have long advertised quick shaves. One maker
advertised a 78-second shave. That was definite. It indicated actual tests. That
man at once made a sensational advance in his sales.
In the old days all beers were advertised as “Pure.” The claim made no
impression. The bigger the type used, the bigger the folly. After millions had
been spent to impress a platitude, one brewer pictured a plate glass room
where beer was cooled in filtered air. He pictured a filter of white wood pulp
through which every drop was cleared. He told how bottles were washed four
times by machinery. How he went down 4,000 feet for pure water. How 1,018
experiments had been made to attain a yeast to give beer that matchless
flavor. And how all the yeast was forever made from that adopted mother cell.
All the claims were such as any brewer might have made. They were mere
essentials in ordinary brewing. But he was the first to tell the people about
them, while others cried merely “pure beer.” He made the greatest success
that was ever made in beer advertising.
“Used the world over” is a very elastic claim. Then one advertiser said,
“Used by the peoples of 52 nations,” and many another has followed.
One statement may take as much room as another, yet a definite statement
be many times as effective. The difference is vast. If a claim is worth making,
make it in the most impressive way.
All these effects must be studied. Salesmanship-in-print is very expensive.
Every word you use may cost $10 to insert. A salesman’s loose talk matters
Specific claims are the opposite of ‘sensational’
claims . . . and bring
sensational sales.
7 l Being Specific
little. But when you are talking to millions at enormous cost, the weight of your
claims is important.
No generality has any weight whatever. It is like saying, “How do you do?”
when you have no intention of inquiring about one’s health. But specific claims
when made in print are taken at their value.
Generalities are worthless.
8 l Tell Your Full Story
Chapter 8
Tell Your Full Story
Whatever claim you use to gain attention, the advertisement should tell a
story reasonably complete. If you watch returns, you will find that certain
claims appeal far more than others. But in usual lines a number of claims
appeal to a large percentage. Then present those claims in every ad for their
effect on that percentage.
Some advertisers, for the sake of brevity, present one claim at a time. Or
they write a serial ad, continued in another issue. There is no greater folly.
Those serials almost never connect.
When you once get a person’s attention, then is the time to accomplish all
you ever hope with him. Bring all your good arguments to bear. Cover every
phase of your subject. One fact appeals to some, one to another. Omit any one
and a certain percentage will lose the fact which might convince.
People are not apt to read successive advertisements on any single line.
No more than you read a news item twice, or a story. In one reading of an
advertisement one decides for or against a proposition. And that operates
against a second reading. So present to the reader, when once you get him,
every important claim you have.
The best advertisers do that. They learn their appealing claims by tests—
by comparing results from various headlines. Gradually they accumulate a list
of claims important enough to use. All those claims appear in every ad
thereafter.
The advertisements seem monotonous to the men who read them all. A
complete story is always the same. But one must consider that the average
Ads aren’t episodic TV.
Tell a complete product
story.
List all your important claims.
One may be a buyer
tipping point.
8 l Tell Your Full Story
reader is only once a reader, probably. And what you fail to tell him in that ad
is something he may never know.
Some advertisers go so far as to never change their ads. Single mail order
ads often run year after year without diminishing returns. So with some
general ads. They are perfected ads, embodying in the best way known all
that one has to say. Advertisers do not expect a second reading. Their
constant returns come from getting new readers.
In every ad consider only new customers. People using your product are
not going to read your ads. They have already read and decided. You might
advertise month after month to present users that the product they use is
poison, and they would never know it. So never waste one line of your space
to say something to present users, unless you can say it in headlines. Bear in
mind always that you address an unconverted prospect.
Any reader of your ad is interested, else he would not be a reader. You are
dealing with someone willing to listen. Then do your level best. That reader, if
you lose him now, may never again be a reader.
You are like a salesman in a busy man’s office. He may have tried again
and again to get entree. He may never be admitted again. This is his one
chance to get action, and he must employ it to the full.
This again brings up the question of brevity. The most common expression
you hear about advertising is that people will not read much. Yet a vast
amount of the best-paying advertising shows that people do read much. Then
they write for a book, perhaps—for added information.
There is no fixed rule on this subject of brevity. One sentence may tell a
complete story on a line like chewing gum. It may on an article like Cream of
Write for the first-time reader.
8 l Tell Your Full Story
Wheat. But, whether long or short, an advertising story should be reasonably
complete.
A certain man desired a personal car. He cared little about the price. He
wanted a car to take pride in, else he felt he would never drive it. But, being a
good business man, he wanted value for his money.
His inclination was toward a Rolls-Royce. He also considered a Pierce-
Arrow, a Locomobile and others. But these famous cars offered no
information. Their advertisements were very short. Evidently the makers
considered it undignified to argue comparative merits.
The Marmon, on the contrary, told a complete story. He read columns and
books about it. So he bought a Marmon, and was never sorry. But he
afterwards learned facts about another car at nearly three times the price
which would have sold him that car had he known them.
What folly it is to cry a name in a line like that, plus a few brief generalities.
A car may be a lifetime investment. It involves an important expenditure. A
man interested enough to buy a car will read a volume about it if the volume is
interesting.
So with everything. You may be simply trying to change a woman from one
breakfast food to another, or one toothpaste, or one soap. She is wedded to
what she is using. Perhaps she has used it for years.
You have a hard proposition. If you do not believe it, go to her in person
and try to make the change. Not to merely buy a first package to please you,
but to adopt your brand. A man who once does that at a woman’s door won’t
argue for brief advertisements. He will never again say, “A sentence will do,”
or a name or a claim or a boast.
Prospects like information
that helps them make a decision.
8 l Tell Your Full Story
Nor will the man who traces his results. Note that brief ads are never
keyed. Note that every traced ad tells a complete story, though it takes
columns to tell.
Never be guided in any way by ads which are untraced. Never do
anything because some uninformed advertiser considers that something right.
Never be led in new paths by the blind. Apply to your advertising ordinary
common sense. Take the opinion of nobody, the verdict of nobody, who
knows nothing about his returns.
Beware the clean-handed
man who advises you on gardening . . .
make decisions only based on testing.
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Schlitz Beer: Claude Ends
‘Commodity’ Thinking with
Preemptive Marketing
State a ‘blinding flash of the obvious’ to gain preemptive advantage.
Problem: Product sameness When Schlitz called Claude Hopkins to help increase market share, theirs was
a problem of differentiation. Each beer maker was making a similar claim:
“Drink our beer because it’s pure.” However, nobody knew what the words
“pure beer” meant.
Solution: Exploit a universal feature
Hopkins began his sales task the same as he always did, with in-depth research. He visited the Schlitz manufacturing plant. As he observed the nitty
gritty details the beer maker took to avoid contamination, Hopkins was
amazed to discover:
Water for the plant comes from artesian wells 4,000-feet deep Special wood pulp filters remove brewed impurities Special cooling rooms contain filtered air Pumps and pipes cleaned 2 times daily Glass bottles steam cleaned 4 times before filling
Fascinated, Hopkins asked the Schlitz executives whey they didn’t tell people
about all these things they did to make pure beer. They shrugged. Schlitz made their beer the same way as everybody else.
“Yes, but nobody’s telling the story,” countered Hopkins. He explained every
step Schlitz took to make their beer pure, and put those facts in their advertising.
Result: Schlitz ties for #1 place Schlitz became the first to say how beer purity was maintained throughout
production. By exploiting a common practice in its entirety, Hopkins gave his
client a “preemptive marketing advantage” over the competition. As a result,
Schlitz skyrocketed to tie for #1 in the marketplace within 6 months. (Records vary on the brand’s starting position. Some archives say 10th place;
others 5th. We’re not sure that’s as important as Hopkins’ winning method.)
But what about the other brands? Couldn’t they have followed suit? Sure, but
they didn’t because no one wanted to look like a Schlitz copycat.
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Takeaway: Educate your customer
Preemptive marketing is simply taking a basic, standard, or universal behind-the-scenes feature or benefit of your product or service—a practice so
commonplace your industry considers it a blinding flash of the obvious—and
making it the leading character, role, or concept of your advertising
campaign.
When you educate your customers on the specifics of what you do down to the nitty, gritty (before the competition lets the cat out of the bag), John Q.
Public focuses his gaze, gape and green on you. You are no longer a
commodity.
How-to: Construct preemptive advertising
Researching the pains you take to make your product better takes careful,
methodical effort. Ask yourself:
What features of our business can we promote in a preemptive fashion?
Is anyone else leading with these in a consistent manner, or are we the first?
What process details can we list to educate our customer?
How many employees do we have; do we provide ongoing training?
Who are our vendors; how do we source them?
How do we maintain quality control?
What’s our development story . . . how did we decide process and materials?
What efforts do we take on our clients’ behalf?
Claude speaks:
“This is a situation which occurs in most advertising problems. The product is not unique. It embodies no great advantages. Perhaps
countless people can make similar products. But tell the pains you take to excel. Tell factors and features which others deem too commonplace to claim. Your product will come to typify those excellences. If others claim
them afterward, it will only serve to advertise you. There are few advertised products which cannot be imitated. Few who dominate a field have any exclusive advantage. They were simply the first to tell certain
convincing facts.”
Ad samples: The Greatest Story Never Told
Study the following Schlitz ads very carefully (especially “Perfection of 50
years”) to see how Hopkins included facts in advertising. Emulate to win at the shelf.
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
The End of Commodity Preemptive advertising paints a vivid, factual
story your competitors aren’t telling.
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
‘Skin Protector’ The End of Obscurity Giving products a persona & finding the right
psychological appeal takes products to fame.
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Strike a Chord & Measure Results Hopkins rolled out Palmolive incrementally . . .
building geo market by geo market along the way.
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
Feature l Claude Hopkins Rare Ad Collection
9 l Art In Advertising
Chapter 9
Art In Advertising
Pictures in advertising are very expensive. Not in the cost of good art work
alone, but in the cost of space. From one-third to one-half of an advertising
campaign is often staked on the power of the pictures.
Anything expensive must be effective, else it involves much waste. So art
in advertising is a study of paramount importance.
Pictures should not be used merely because they are interesting. Or to
attract attention. Or to decorate an ad. We have covered these points
elsewhere. Ads are not written to interest, please or amuse. You are not
writing to please the hoi-polloi. You are writing on a serious subject—the
subject of money-spending. And you address a restricted minority.
Use pictures only to attract those who may profit you. Use them only when
they form a better selling argument than the same amount of space set in type.
Mail order advertisers, as we have said, have pictures down to a science.
Some use large pictures, some use small, some omit pictures entirely. A
noticeable fact is that none of them uses expensive art work. Be sure that all
these things are done for reasons made apparent by results.
Any other advertiser should apply the same principles. Or, if none exist
which apply to his line, he should work out his own by tests. It is certainly
unwise to spend large sums on a dubious adventure.
Pictures in many lines form a major factor, omitting the lines where the
article itself should be pictured. In some lines, like Arrow Collars and in
clothing advertising, pictures have proved most convincing. Not only in
The highest cost of art
may not be how much
you paid for it but its
real estate cost on the page.
Mail order advertisers have pictures down
to a science—none
use expensive art work.
9 l Art In Advertising
picturing the collar or the clothes, but in picturing men whom others envy, in
surroundings which others covet. The pictures subtly suggest that these
articles of apparel will aid men to those desired positions.
So with correspondence schools. Theirs is traced advertising. Picturing
men in high positions or taking upward steps forms a very convincing
argument.
So with beauty articles. Picturing beautiful women, admired and attractive,
is a supreme inducement. But there is a great advantage in including a
fascinated man. Women desire beauty largely because of men. Then show
them using their beauty, as women do use it, to gain maximum effect.
Advertising pictures should not be eccentric. Don’t treat your subject
lightly. Don’t lessen respect for yourself or your article by any attempt at
frivolity. People do not patronize a clown. There are two things about which
men should never joke. One is business, one is home.
An eccentric picture may do you serious damage. One may gain attention
by wearing a fool’s cap. But he would ruin his selling prospects.
Then a picture which is eccentric or unique takes attention from your
subject. You cannot afford to do that. Your main appeal lies in your headline.
Over-shadow that and you kill it. Don’t, to gain general and useless attention,
sacrifice the attention that you want.
Don’t be like a salesman who wears conspicuous clothes. The small
percentage he appeals to are not usually good buyers. The great majority of
the sane and thrifty heartily despise him. Be normal in everything you do
when you are seeking confidence and conviction.
Certain industries lend themselves to
photos, i.e. fashion
and beauty.
Avoid eccentric
pictures that
deter the reader from your offer.
9 l Art In Advertising
Generalities cannot well be applied to art. There are seeming exceptions
to most statements. Each line must be studied by itself.
But the picture must help sell the goods. It should help more than anything
else could do in like space, else use that something else.
Many pictures tell a story better than type can do. In the advertising of
Puffed Grains the pictures of the grains were found to be most effective. They
awake curiosity. No figure drawings in that case compare in results with these
grains.
Other pictures form a total loss. We have cited cases of that kind. The only
way to know, as is with most other questions, is by compared results.
There are disputed questions in art work which we will cite without
expressing opinions. They seem to be answered both ways, according to the
line which is advertised.
Does it pay better to use fine art work or ordinary? Some advertisers pay
up to $2,000 per drawing. They figure that the space is expensive. The art is
small in comparison. So they consider the best worth its cost.
Others argue that few people have art education. The art judges form a
percentage too small to consider. They bring out their ideas, and bring them
out well, at a fraction of the cost. Mail order advertisers are generally in this
class.
The question is one of small moment. Certainly good art pays as well as
mediocre. And the cost of preparing ads is very small compared with the cost
of insertion.
Should every ad have a new picture? Or may a picture be repeated? Both
viewpoints have many supporters. The probability is that repetition is an
Ask not how it looks,
but how it sells.
9 l Art In Advertising
economy. We are after new customers always. It is not probable that they
remember a picture we have used before. If they do, repetition does not
detract.
Do color pictures pay better than black and white? Not generally,
according to the evidence we have gathered to date. Yet there are
exceptions. Certain food dishes look far better in colors. Tests on lines like
oranges, desserts, etc. show that color pays. Color comes close to placing the
products on actual exhibition.
But color used to amuse or to gain attention is like anything else that we
use for that purpose. It may attract many times as many people, yet not secure
a hearing from as many whom we want.
The general rule applies. Do nothing to merely interest, amuse, or attract.
That is not your province. Do only that which wins the people you are after in
the cheapest possible way.
But these are minor questions. They are mere economies, not largely
affecting the results of a campaign.
Some things you do may cut all your results in two. Other things can be
done which multiply those results. Minor costs are insignificant when
compared with basic principles. One man may do business in a shed, another
in a palace. That is immaterial. The great question is one’s power to get the
maximum results.
Generalities cannot well be
applied to art.
Do only that which wins
the people you are
after in the cheapest possible way.
10 l Things Too Costly
Chapter 10
Things Too Costly
Many things are possible in advertising which are too costly to attempt.
That is another reason why every project and method should be weighed and
determined by a known scale of cost and result.
.Changing people’s habits is very expensive. A project which involves that
must be seriously considered. To sell shaving soap to the peasants of Russia
one would first need to change their beard-wearing habits. The cost would be
excessive. Yet countless advertisers try to do things almost as impossible. Just
because questions are not ably considered, and results are untraced and
unknown.
For instance, the advertiser of a dentifrice may spend much space and
money to educate people to brush their teeth. Tests which we know of have
indicated that the cost of such converts may run from $20 to $25 each. Not only
because of the difficulty, but because much of the advertising goes to people
already converted.
Such a cost, of course, is unthinkable. One might not in a lifetime get it
back in sales. The maker who learned these facts by tests makes no attempt to
educate people to the tooth brush habit. What cannot be done on a large scale
profitably cannot be done on a small scale. So not one line in any ad is
devoted to this object. This maker, who is constantly guided in everything by
keying every ad, has made a remarkable success.
Another dentrifrice maker spends much money to make converts to the
tooth brush. The object is commendable, but altruistic. The new business he
Many things in
advertising are too costly to attempt.
Changing people’s habits
is very expensive.
10 l Things Too Costly
creates is shared by his rivals. He is wondering why his sales increase is in no
way commensurate with his expenditure.
An advertiser at one time spent much money to educate people to the use
of oatmeal. The results were too small to discover. All people know of
oatmeal. As a food for children it has age-old fame. Doctors have advised it for
many generations. People who don’t serve oatmeal are therefore difficult to
start. Perhaps their objections are insurmountable. Anyway, the cost proved
to be beyond all possible return.
There are many advertisers who know facts like these and concede them.
They would not think of devoting a whole campaign to any such impossible
object. Yet they devote a share of their space to that object. That is only the
same folly on a smaller scale. It is not good business.
No one orange grower or raisin grower could attempt to increase the
consumption of those fruits. The cost might be a thousand times his share of
the returns. But thousands of growers combined have done it on those and
many other lines. There lies one of the great possibilities of advertising
development. The general consumption of scores of foods can be profitably
increased. But it must be done through wide co-operation.
No advertiser could afford to educate people on vitamins or germicides.
Such things are done by authorities, through countless columns of unpaid-for
space. But great successes have been made by going to people already
educated and satisfying their created wants.
It is a very shrewd thing to watch the development of a popular trend, the
creation of new desires. Then at the right time offer to satisfy those desires.
That was done on yeasts, for instance, and on numerous antiseptics. It can
every year be done on new things which some popular fashion or wide-
Advertising doesn’t create desire—it channels it.
Trends are human desires
on the rise. Offer to satisfy them.
10 l Things Too Costly
spread influence is bringing into vogue. But it is a very different thing to
create that fashion, taste or influence for all in your field to share.
There are some things we know of which might possibly be sold to half the
homes in the country. A Dakin-fluid germicide, for instance. But the
consumption would be very small. A small bottle might last for years.
Customers might cost $1.50 each. And the revenue per customer might not in
ten years repay the cost of getting.
Mail order sales on single articles, however popular, rarely cost less than
$2.50 each. It is reasonable to suppose that sales made through dealers on
like articles will cost approximately as much. Those facts must be considered
on any one-sale article. Possibly one user will win others. But traced returns as
in mail order advertising would prohibit much advertising which is now being
done.
Costly mistakes are made by blindly following some ill-conceived idea. An
article, for instance, may have many uses, one of which is to prevent disease.
Prevention is not a popular subject, however much it should be. People will
do much to cure a trouble, but people in general will do little to prevent it.
This has been proved by many disappointments.
One may spend much money in arguing prevention when the same money
spent on another claim would bring many times the sales. A heading which
asserts one claim may bring ten times the results of a heading which asserts
another. An advertiser may go far astray unless he finds this out.
A tooth paste may tend to prevent decay. It may also beautify the teeth.
Tests will probably show that the latter appeal is many times as strong as the
former. The most successful tooth paste advertiser never features tooth
troubles in his headlines. Tests have proved them unappealing. Other
Don’t guess at
sales appeals.
Test before
spending large amounts of money.
10 l Things Too Costly
advertisers in this line center on those troubles. That is often because results
are not known and compared.
A soap may tend to cure eczema. It may at the same time improve the
complexion. The eczema claim may appeal to one in a hundred while the
beauty claims would appeal to nearly all. To even mention the eczema claims
might destroy the beauty claim.
A man has a relief for asthma. It has done so much for him that he considers
it a great advertising possibility. We have no statistics on this subject. We do
not know the percentage of people who suffer from asthma. A canvass might
show it to be one in a hundred. If so, he would need to cover a hundred
useless readers to reach the one he wants. His cost of results might be twenty
times as high as on another article which appeals to one in five. That excessive
cost would probably mean disaster. For reasons like these every new
advertiser should seek for wise advice. No one with the interests of
advertising at heart will advise any dubious venture.
Some claims not popular enough to feature in the main are still popular
enough to consider. They influence a certain number of people—say one-
fourth of your possible customers. Such a claim may be featured to advantage
in a certain percentage of headlines. It should probably be included in every
advertisement. But those are not things to guess at. They should be decided
by actual knowledge, usually by traced returns.
This chapter, like every chapter, points out a very important reason for
knowing your results. Scientific advertising is impossible without that. So is
safe advertising. So is maximum profit.
Groping in the dark in this field has probably cost enough money to pay
the national debt. That is what has filled the advertising graveyards. That is
what has discouraged thousands who could profit in this field. And the dawn
of knowledge is what is bringing a new day in the advertising world.
Measure everything.
Pay constant attention
to your results and tweak appeals
where needed.
Groping in the dark
with advertising has
probably cost enough money to pay the
national debt
.
Measure everything.
Pay constant attention to your results and
tweak appeals
where needed.
Groping in the dark
with advertising has probably cost enough
money to pay the
national debt
Elena
Sr. Growth Strategist
MARTINEZ Numbers Don’t Lie
Direct mail either pays for itself or it doesn’t. Its built-in, BIG DATA targeting
makes it a potential goldmine that CMOs
and CFOs can appreciate.
Marketers spent > $45Billion on direct
mail—more than search, online video, online rich media, online banner ads and
print magazine advertising combined. 2012
Integrating direct mail in branding
campaigns improved the lift of local ads by 44% & online campaigns by 62%. 2011
The avg. household receives 2 pieces of
DM a day vs. 157 emails; advertisers who
stick with it gain ‘share of mailbox’ & higher ROI.
79% of consumers find reading mail
easier than going online.
Technology allows for maximum
targeting: highly personalized messaging, offers, and graphics—even co. branded
indicias. 2013
Non-profits can slash rates to 7.9₵ using
Every Door Direct. 2013
Source: United States Postal Service
Meet Elena
Rises up fulfillment ladder at Diversified Direct
leading accounts for The American Red Cross,
Merrill Corp., USC, UCLA, and Robinson’s-May. At World Marketing (Berkshire Hathaway),
finesses art and science of merging critical,
political, and regulatory mailings with a number
of modern multi-media capabilities.
Towne Touch: Shows political candidate how a
simple redesign saves him $40,000 without
compromising a penny of messaging.
Ask Elena anything:
www.linkedin.com/pub/elena-martinez/9/a3/755
Time At Towne: 10 months
11 l Information
Chapter 11
Information
An ad-writer, to have a chance at success, must gain full information on his
subject. The library of an advertising agency should have books on every line
that calls for research. A painstaking advertising man will often read for
weeks on some problem which comes up.
Perhaps in many volumes he will find few facts to use. But some one fact
may be the keynote of success.
This writer has just completed an enormous amount of reading, medical
and otherwise, on coffee. This to advertise a coffee without caffeine. One
scientific article out of a thousand perused gave the keynote for that
campaign. It was the fact that caffeine stimulation comes two hours after
drinking. So the immediate bracing effects which people seek from coffee do
not come from the caffeine. Removing caffeine does not remove the kick. It
does not modify coffee’s delights, for caffeine is tasteless and odorless.
Caffeineless coffee has been advertised for years. People regarded it like
near-beer. Only through weeks of reading did we find the way to put it in
another light.
To advertise a tooth paste this writer has also read many volumes of
scientific matter dry as dust. But in the middle of one volume he found the idea
which has helped make millions for that tooth paste maker. And has made this
campaign one of the sensations of advertising.
Genius is the art of taking pains. The advertising man who spares the
midnight oil will never get very far.
Effective subject
research produces effective advertising.
Genius is the art of
taking pains.
11 l Information
Before advertising a food product, 130 men were employed for weeks to
interview all classes of consumers.
On another line, letters were sent to 12,000 physicians. Questionnaires are
often mailed to tens of thousands of men and women to get the viewpoint of
consumers.
A $25,000-a-year man, before advertising outfits for acetylene gas, spent
weeks in going from farm to farm. Another man did that on a tractor.
Before advertising a shaving cream, one thousand men were asked to state
what they most desired in shaving soap.
Called on to advertise pork and beans, a canvass was made of some
thousands of homes. Theretofore all pork and bean advertising had been
based on “Buy my brand.” That canvass showed that only 4 per cent of the
people used any canned pork and beans. Ninety-six per cent baked their
beans at home.
The problem was not to sell a particular brand. Any such attempt appealed
to only 4 per cent. The right appeal was to win the people away from home-
baked beans. That advertising which, without that knowledge must have
failed, proved a great success.
A canvass is made, not only of homes, but of dealers. Competition is
measured up.
Every advertiser of a similar product is written for his literature and claims.
Thus we start with exact information on all that our rivals are doing.
Clipping bureaus are patronized, so that everything printed on our subject
comes to the man who writes ads.
Profitable advertising
demands weeks of subject,
product and prospect research.
11 l Information
Every comment which comes from consumers or dealers goes to this
man’s desk.
It is often necessary in a line to learn the total expenditure. We must learn
what a user spends a year, else we shall not know if users are worth the cost of
getting.
We must learn the total consumption, else we may overspend.
We must learn the percentage of readers to whom our product appeals.
We must often gather this data on classes. The percentage may differ on farms
and in cities. The cost of advertising largely depends on the percentage of
waste circulation.
Thus an advertising campaign is usually preceded by a very large volume
of data. Even an experimental campaign, for effective experiments cost a
great deal of work and time.
Often chemists are employed to prove or disprove doubtful claims. An
advertiser, in all good faith, makes an impressive assertion. If it is true, it will
form a big factor in advertising. If untrue, it may prove a boomerang. And it
may bar our ads from good mediums. It is remarkable how often a maker
proves wrong on assertions he has made for years.
Impressive claims are made far more impressive by making them exact.
So may experiments are often made to get the actual figures. For instance, a
certain drink is known to have a large food value. That simple assertion is not
very convincing. So we send the drink to a laboratory and find that its food
value is 425 calories per pint. One pint is equal to six eggs in calories of
nutriment. That claim makes a great impression.
The right appeal is frequently what comes out
of an ideal prospect’s mouth.
11 l Information
In every line involving scientific details a censor is appointed. The ad-
writer, however well-informed, may draw wrong inferences from facts. So an
authority passes on every advertisement.
The uninformed would be staggered to know the amount of work involved
in a single ad. Weeks of work sometimes. The ad seems so simple, and it must
be simple to appeal to simple people. But back of that ad may lie reams of
data, volumes of information, months of research.
So this is no lazy man’s field.
The amount of work the goes into writing a
profitable ad is staggering.
Information-gathering is not for the lazy.
12 l Strategy
Chapter 12
Strategy
Advertising is much like war, minus the venom. Or much, if you prefer,
like a game of chess. We are usually out to capture others’ citadels or garner
others’ trade.
We must have skill and knowledge. We must have training and
experience, also right equipment. We must have proper ammunition, and
enough. We dare not underestimate opponents. Our intelligence department
is a vital factor, as told in the previous chapter. We need alliances with
dealers, as another chapter tells. We also need strategy of the ablest sort, to
multiply the value of our forces.
Sometimes in new campaigns comes the question of a name. That may be
most important. Often the right name is an advertisement in itself. It may tell a
fairly complete story, like Shredded Wheat, Cream of Wheat, Puffed Rice,
Spearmint Gum, Palmolive Soap, etc.
That may be a great advantage. The name is usually conspicuously
displayed. Many a name has proved to be the greatest factor in an article’s
success. Other names prove a distinct disadvantage—Toasted Corn Flakes,
for instance. Too many others may share a demand with the man who builds it
up.
Many coined names without meaning have succeeded. Kodak, Karo,
Mazda, etc., are examples. They are exclusive. The advertiser who gives them
meaning never needs to share his advantage. But a significant name which
helps to impress a dominant claim is certainly a great advantage. Names
Advertising is like a game of chess.
Product names are king.
12 l Strategy
which tell stories have been worth millions of dollars. So a great deal of
research often precedes the selection of a name.
Sometimes a price must be decided. A high price creates resistance. It
tends to limit one’s field. The cost of getting an added profit may be more than
the profit.
It is a well-known fact that the greatest profits are made on great volume at
small profit. Campbell’s Soups, Palmolive Soap, Karo Syrup and Ford cars are
conspicuous examples. A price which appeals only to—say 10 per cent—
multiplies the cost of selling.
But on other lines high price is unimportant. High profit is essential. The
line may have small sale per customer. One hardly cares what he pays for a
corn remedy because he uses little. The maker must have a large margin
because of small consumption.
On other lines a higher price may be even an inducement. Such lines are
judged largely by price. A product which costs more than the ordinary is
considered above the ordinary. So the price question is always a very big
factor in strategy.
Competition must be considered. What are the forces against you? What
have they in price or quality or claims to weigh against your appeal? What
have you to win trade against them? What have you to hold trade against them
when you get it?
How strongly are your rivals entrenched? There are some fields which are
almost impregnable. They are usually lines which created a new habit or
custom and which typify that custom with consumers. They so dominate a field
that one can hardly hope to invade it. They have the volume, the profit to
make a tremendous fight.
Price to sell and make
a profit.
Consider your competitor’s line items—price, quality,
claims, marketplace rank,
customer [mind] position.
12 l Strategy
Such fields are being constantly invaded. But it is done through some
convincing advantage, or through very superior salesmanship-in-print.
Other lines are only less difficult. A new shaving soap, as an example.
About every possible customer is using some rival soap. Most of them are
satisfied with it. Many are wedded to it. The appeal must be strong enough to
win those people from long established favor.
Such things are not accomplished by haphazard efforts. Not by
considering people in the mass and making blind stabs for their favors. We
must consider individuals, typical people who are using rival brands. A man
on a Pullman, for instance, using his favorite soap. What could you say to him
in person to get him to change to yours? We cannot go after thousands of men
until we learn how to win one.
The maker may say that he has no distinctions. He is making a good
product, but much like others. He deserves a share of the trade, but he has
nothing exclusive to offer. However, there is nearly always something
impressive which others have not told. We must discover it. We must have a
seeming advantage. People don’t quit habits without reason.
There is the problem of substitution and how to head it off. That often steals
much of one’s trade. This must be considered in one’s original plan. One must
have the foresight to see all eventualities, and the wisdom to establish his
defenses in advance.
Many pioneers in a line establish large demands. Then, through some fault
in their foundations, lose a large share of the harvest. Theirs is a mere brand,
for instance, where it might have stood for an exclusive product.
Vaseline is an example. That product established a new demand, then
almost monopolized that demand through wisdom at the start. To have called
Discover a story
no one else is telling.
Establish an exclusive place in
your customer’s mind.
12 l Strategy
it some brand of petroleum jelly might have made a difference of millions in
results.
Jell-O, Postum, Victrola, Kodak, etc., established coined names which
came to typify a product. Some such names have been admitted to the
dictionary. They have become common names, though coined and exclusive.
Royal Baking Powder and Toasted Corn Flakes, on the other hand, when
they pioneered their fields, left the way open to perpetual substitution. So did
Horlick’s Malted Milk.
The attitude of dealers must be considered. There is a growing inclination
to limit lines, to avoid duplicate lines, to lessen inventories. If this applies to
your line, how will dealers receive it? If there is opposition, how can we
circumvent it?
The problems of distribution are important and enormous. To advertise
something which few dealers supply is a waste of ammunition. Those
problems will be considered in a separate chapter.
These are samples of the problems which advertising men must solve.
These are some of the reasons why vast experience is necessary. One
oversight may cost the client millions in the end. One wrong piece of strategy
may prohibit success. Things done in one way may be twice as easy, half as
costly, as when done another way.
Advertising without this preparation is like a waterfall going to waste. The
power may be there, but it is not made effective. We must center the force
and direct it in a practical direction.
Advertising often looks very simple. Thousands of men claim ability to do
it. And there still is a wide impression that many men can. As a result, much
advertising goes by favor. But the men who know realize that the problems
Distribution challenges are
important and enormous—
can you fulfill?
Advertising without strategic
preparation is like a waterfall going to waste.
12 l Strategy
are as many and as important as the problems in building a skyscraper. And
many of them lie in the foundations. The problems of advertising are
as important as the problems
of building a skyscraper-- many of them lie in
the foundations.
-
Nicole
President
SEYMOUR Open Me Now!
7 Ways to get your envelopes opened.
1- Use teaser copy to call out your
audience—Coffee Lovers.
2- Use directive language—See Inside.
3- Use the real estate—load up copy
front and back. Or keep blank!
4- Bullet point benefits—or try mind-
bending fascinators.
5- Don’t mention your corp. name if it
doesn’t mean anything to the reader.
USPS requires identification only
when mailing at low rates available to fundraisers.
6- Try a new size to stand out from the
pack.
7- Let provocative copy peek through—
use more than 1 window.
Meet Javier Meet Nicole
Works in every employee position from the
ground up: hand assembly on shop floor…
accounting… account management… fulfillment… sales lead… designing Proprietary Inventory
Management System… to launching, nurturing &
growing some of Towne’s most loyal customer
accounts.
Towne Touch: Turns distressed accounts
around on a dime.
Ask Nicole anything: www.linkedin.com/pub/nicole-seymour/12/a02/b92/
Time At Towne: 27 years
13 l Use of samples
Chapter 13
Use Of Samples
The product itself should be its own best salesman. Not the product alone,
but the product plus a mental impression, and atmosphere, which you place
around it. That being so, samples are of prime importance. However
expensive, they usually form the cheapest selling method. A salesman might
as well go out without his sample case as an advertiser.
Sampling does not apply to little things alone, like foods or proprietaries. It
can be applied in some way to almost anything. We have sampled clothing.
We are now sampling phonograph records.
Samples serve numerous valuable purposes. They enable one to use the
word “Free” in ads. That often multiplies the readers. Most people want to
learn about any offered gift. Tests often show that samples pay for
themselves—perhaps several times over—in multiplying the readers of your
ads without additional cost of space.
A sample gets action. The reader of your ad may not be convinced to the
point of buying. But he is ready to learn more about the product that you offer.
So he cuts out a coupon, lays it aside, and later mails it or presents it. Without
that coupon he would soon forget.
Then you have the name and address of an interested prospect. You can
start him using your product. You can give him fuller information. You can
follow him up.
That reader might not again read one of your ads in six months. Your
impression would be lost. But when he writes you, you have a chance to
The product itself should be its own
best salesman.
Sampling can be applied to anything.
Clipped coupons are
valuable product-reminders that last long after
the ad is gone.
13 l Use of samples
complete with that prospect all that can be done. In that saving of waste the
sample pays for itself.
Sometimes a small sample is not a fair test. Then we may send an order on
the dealer for a full-size package. Or we may make the coupon good for a
package at the store. Thus we get a longer test.
You say that is expensive. So is it expensive to gain a prospect’s interest. It
may cost you 50 cents to get the person to the point of writing for a sample.
Don’t stop at 15 cents additional to make that interest valuable.
Another way in which samples pay is by keying your advertisements. They
register the interest you create. Thus you can compare one with another ad,
headline, plan and method.
That means in any line an enormous saving. The wisest, most experienced
man cannot tell what will most appeal in any line of copy. Without a key to
guide you, your returns are very apt to cost you twice what they need cost.
And we know that some ads on the same product will cost ten times what
others cost. A sample may pay for itself several times over by giving you an
accurate check.
Again samples enable you to refer customers where they can be supplied.
This is important before you attain general distribution.
Many advertisers lose much by being penny-wise. They are afraid of
imposition, or they try to save pennies. That is why they ask ten cents for a
sample, or a stamp or two. Getting that dime may cost them from 40 cents to
$1. That is, it may add that to the cost of the replies. But it is remarkable how
many will pay that addition rather than offer a sample free.
Coded-coupon tracking
is an invaluable practice.
Results of coupon-use
shapes ad copy
down to the penny.
13 l Use of samples
Putting a price on a sample greatly retards replies. Then it prohibits you
from using the word “Free” in your ads. And that word “Free,” as we have
stated, will generally more than pay for your samples.
For the same reason some advertisers say, “You buy one package, we will
buy the other.” Or they make a coupon good for part of the purchase price.
Any keyed returns will clearly prove that such offers do not pay. Before a
prospect is converted, it is approximately as hard to get half price for your
article as to get the full price for it.
Bear in mind that you are the seller. You are the one courting interest.
Then don’t make it difficult to exhibit that interest. Don’t ask your prospects to
pay for your selling efforts. Three in four will refuse to pay—perhaps nine in
ten.
Cost of requests for samples differ in every line. It depends on your
breadth of appeal. Some things appeal to everybody, some to a small
percentage. One issue of the papers in Greater New York brought 1,460,000
requests for a can of evaporated milk. On a chocolated drink, one-fifth the
coupons published are presented. Another line not widely used may bring a
fraction of that number.
But the cost of inquiries is usually enough to be important. Then don’t
neglect them. Don’t stint your efforts with those you have half sold. An inquiry
means that a prospect has read your story and is interested. He or she would
like to try your product and learn more about it. Do what you would do if that
prospect stood before you.
Cost of inquiries depends largely on how they come. Asking people to
mail the coupon brings minimum returns. Often four times as many will
present that coupon for a sample at the store.
“Free” is not a 4-letter word in sampling.
Inquiries cost the seller money; don’t stint
your efforts.
13 l Use of samples
On a line before the writer now, sample inquiries obtained by mail
average 70 cents each. The same ad brings inquiries at from 18 cents to 22
cents each when the coupons are presented at a local store.
Most people write few letters. Writing is an effort. Perhaps they have no
stamps in the house. Most people will pay carfare to get a sample rather than
two cents postage. Therefore, it is always best, where possible, to have
samples delivered locally.
On one line three methods were offered. The woman could write for a
sample, or telephone, or call at a store. Seventy per cent of the inquiries came
by telephone. The use of the telephone is more common and convenient than
the use of stamps.
Sometimes it is not possible to supply all dealers with samples. Then we
refer people to some central stores. These stores are glad to have many
people come there. And other dealers do not generally object so long as they
share in the sales.
It is important to have these dealers send you the coupons promptly. Then
you can follow up the inquiries while their interest is fresh.
It is said that sample users repeat. They do to some extent. But repeaters
form a small percentage. Figure it in your cost.
Say to the woman, “Only one sample to a home” and few women will try to
get more of them. And the few who cheat you are not generally people who
would buy. So you are not losing purchasers, but the samples only.
On numerous lines we have for long offered full-size packages free. The
packages were priced at from 10 cents to 50 cents each. In certain territories
Prospects who want inordinate
samples are generally not purchasers and can be dropped from your list.
13 l Use of samples
for a time we have checked up on repeaters. And we found the loss much less
than the cost of checking.
In some lines samples would be wasted on children, and they are most apt
to get them. Then say in your coupon “adults only.” Children will not present
such coupons, and they will rarely mail them.
But one must be careful about publishing coupons good for a full-size
package at any store. Some people, and even dealers, may buy up many
papers. We do not announce the date of such offers. And we insert them in
Sunday papers, not so easily bought up.
But we do not advocate samples given out promiscuously. Samples
distributed to homes, like waifs on the doorsteps, probably never pay. Many
of them never reach the housewife. When they do, there is no predilection for
them. The product is cheapened. It is not introduced in a favorable way.
So with demonstrations in stores. There is always a way to get the same
results at a fraction of the cost.
Many advertisers do not understand this. They supply thousands of
samples to dealers to be handed out as they will. Could a trace be placed on
the cost of returns, the advertiser would be stunned.
Give samples to interested people only. Give them only to people who
exhibit that interest by some effort. Give them only to people to whom you
have told your story. First create an atmosphere of respect, a desire, an
expectation. When people are in that mood, your sample will usually confirm
the qualities you claim.
Here again comes the advantage of figuring cost per customer. That is the
only way to gauge advertising. Samples sometimes seem to double
advertising cost. They often cost more than the advertising. Yet, rightly used,
There are ways to be strategic with your
sampling.
Indiscriminate sampling is willy-nilly.
Trace [track] your
samples!
13 l Use of samples
they almost invariably form the cheapest way to get customers. And that is
what you want.
The arguments against samples are usually biased. They may come from
advertising agents who like to see all the advertising money spent in print.
Answer such arguments by tests. Try some towns with them, some without
them. Where samples are effectively employed, we rarely find a line where
they do not lessen the cost per customer.
Figuring cost per customer
is the truest way to gauge advertising.
14 l Getting distribution
Chapter 14
Getting Distribution
Most advertisers are confronted with the problem of getting distribution.
National advertising is unthinkable without that. A venture cannot be
profitable if nine in ten of the converts fail to find the goods.
To force dealers to stock by bringing repeated demands may be
enormously expensive. To cover the country with a selling force is usually
impossible. To get dealers to stock an unknown line on promise of advertising
is not easy. They have seen too many efforts fail, too many promises
rescinded.
We cannot discuss all plans for getting distribution. There are scores of
ways employed, according to the enterprise. Some start by soliciting direct
sales—mail orders—until the volume of demand forces dealers to supply.
Some get into touch with prospects by a sample or other offer, then refer
them to certain dealers who are stocked.
Some well-known makers can get a large percentage of dealers to stock in
advance under guarantee of sale. Some consign goods to jobbers so dealers
can easily order. Some name certain dealers in their ads until dealers, in
general, stock.
The problems in this line are numberless. The successful methods are
many. But most of them apply to lines too few to be worthy of discussion in a
book like this.
Fulfillment is everything.
What’s the point
of advertising if
the buyer doesn’t get her goods?
Distribution and fulfillment
challenges are many—but they don’t have to be.
14 l Getting distribution
We shall deal here with articles of wide appeal and repeated sales, like
foods or proprietary articles.
We usually start with local advertising, even though magazine advertising
is best adapted to the article. We get our distribution town by town, then
change to national advertising.
Sometimes we name the dealers who are stocked. As others stock, we add
their names. When a local campaign is proposed, naming certain dealers, the
average dealer wants to be included. It is often possible to get most of them
by offering to name them in the first few ads.
Whether you advertise few or many dealers, the others will stock in very
short order if the advertising is successful. Then the trade is referred to all
dealers.
The sample plans dealt with in the previous chapter aid quick distribution.
They often pay for themselves in this way alone.
If the samples are distributed locally, the coupon names the stores. The
prospects who go there to get samples know that those stores are supplied, if
a nearer dealer is not. Thus little trade is lost.
When sample inquiries come to the advertiser, inquirers are referred to
certain dealers at the start. Enough demand is centered there to force those
dealers to supply it.
Sometimes most stores are supplied with samples, but on the requirement
of a certain purchase. You supply a dozen samples with a dozen packages, for
instance. Then inquirers for samples are referred to all stores. This quickly
forces general distribution. Dealers don’t like to have their customers go to
competitors even for a sample.
Start locally.
Finesse your product
sales and distribution town by town, then
nationally.
Keep your dealers amply
sampled; dealers don’t
like sending prospects to a co. competitor . . . even for a
sampler.
14 l Getting distribution
Where a coupon is used, good at any store for a full-size package, the
problem of distribution becomes simple. Mail to dealers proofs of the ad
which will contain the coupon. Point out to each that many of his customers are
bound to present that coupon. Each coupon means a cash sale at full profit. No
average dealer will let those customers go elsewhere.
Such a free-package offer often pays for itself in this way. It forms the
cheapest way of getting general distribution.
Some of the most successful advertisers have done this in a national way.
They have inserted coupon ads in magazines, each coupon good at any store
for a full-size package. A proof of the ad is sent to dealers in advance, with a
list of the magazines to be used, and their circulation.
In this way, in one week sometimes, makers attain a reasonable national
distribution. And the coupon ad, when it appears, completes it. Here again the
free packages cost less than other ways of forcing distribution. And they start
thousands of users besides. Palmolive Soap and Puffed Grains are among the
products which attained their distribution in that way.
Half the circulation of a newspaper may go to outside towns. That half may
be wasted if you offer a sample at local stores. Say in your coupon that outside
people should write you for a sample. When they write, do not mail the
sample. Send the samples to a local store, and refer inquirers to that store.
Mailing a sample may make a convert who cannot be supplied. But the store
which supplies the sample will usually supply demand.
In these ways, many advertisers get national distribution without
employing a single salesman. They get it immediately. And they get it at far
lower cost than by any other method.
There are advertisers who, in starting, send every dealer a few packages
as a gift. That is better, perhaps, than losing customers created. But it is very
Dealer & franchise coupons can produce
cash sales at full profit.
Get your products in your
customers’ hands by using
coupons in ways that make dollars and sense.
The savviest of marketers
depend on their advertising
(rather than sales staff) to sell.
14 l Getting distribution
expensive. Those free packages must be sold by advertising. Figure their cost
at your selling price, and you will see that you are paying a high cost per
dealer. A salesman might sell these small stocks at a lower cost. And other
methods may be vastly cheaper.
Sending stocks on consignment to retailers is not widely favored. Many
dealers resent it. Collections are difficult. And unbusiness-like methods do not
win dealer respect.
The plans advocated here are the best plans yet discovered for the lines to
which they apply. Other lines require different methods. The ramifications are
too many to discuss in a book like this.
But don’t start advertising without distribution. Don’t get distribution by
methods too expensive. Or by slow, old-fashioned methods. The loss of time
may cost you enormously in sales. And it may enable energetic rivals to get
ahead of you.
Go to men who know by countless experiences the best plan to apply to
your line.
Slow fulfillment may cost you enormously in sales—
and give your competition
a leg-up.
Distribution varies by
product line and situation. Go to a fulfillment expert.
Allison
Sales Executive
MEINKING When 2 + 3 = 1
Dimensional mail is ‘tabletop stackable’
and ‘top of mind’ sticky.
If your first Pop-Up or 3D mailing is a
success, consider running a sequential
campaign.
Little known direct response math shows
that the response of a 2nd and 3rd mailing will match the results of the 1st.
Step 1: Let’s say you mail out 500
premiums to your in-house list with a
4% ROI.
Now, reword your offer. Then send it 2X,
to the same list. Like this:
Step 2: Send a postcard.
Step 3: Send a new premium.
Drop the entire campaign over 4-6 weeks.
It’s not unlikely that:
Step 2 + Step 3 = same ROI as Step 1
(or a few percentage points either way).
People love to be entertained.
Dimensional is advantageous.
Meet Allison
Integrated marketing and fulfillment pro with 19
years experience—both agency and client side.
At Prudential Real Estate, handles marcom development & dist. for 40,000 agents. Also with
Specialized Marketing Services and Hayes
Martin. Second time around with Towne.
Towne Touch: Decision to trim a 3D package by
2/8” saves agency $70,000 on annual gift
mailing.
Ask Allison anything:
www.linkedin.com/in/allisonmeinking
Time At Towne: 2 years
15 l Test campaigns
Chapter 15
Test Campaigns
Almost any question can be answered cheaply, quickly and finally, by a
test campaign. And that’s the way to answer them—not by arguments around
a table. Go to the court of last resort—the buyers of your product.
On every new project there comes up the question of selling that article
profitably. You and your friends may like it, but the majority may not. Some
rival product may be better liked or cheaper. It may be strongly entrenched.
The users won away from it may cost too much to get.
People may buy and not repeat. The article may last too long. It may
appeal to a small percentage, so most of your advertising goes to waste.
There are many surprises in advertising. A project you will laugh at may
make a great success. A project you are sure of may fall down. All because
tastes differ so. None of us know enough people’s desires to get an average
viewpoint.
None of us know enough people’s desires to get an average viewpoint.
In the old days, advertisers ventured on their own opinions. The few
guessed right, the many wrong. Those were the times of advertising disasters.
Even those who succeeded came close to the verge before the tide was
turned. They did not know their cost per customer or their sale per customer.
The cost of selling might take long to come back. Often it never came back.
Now we let the thousands decide what the millions will do. We make a
small venture, and watch cost and result. When we learn what a thousand
Almost any question can be answered cheaply, quickly
and finally by a test campaign.
What you thought would
sell like gangbusters
could bomb—and
vice-versa.
Advertising holds many surprises.
15 l Test campaigns
customers cost, we know almost exactly what a million will cost. When we
learn what they buy, we know what a million will buy.
We establish averages on a small scale, and those averages always hold.
We know our cost, we know our sale, we know our profit or our loss. We know
how soon our cost comes back. Before we spread out, we prove our
undertaking absolutely safe. So there are today no advertising disasters
piloted by men who know.
Perhaps we try out our project in four or five towns. We may use a sample
offer or a free package to get users started quickly. We learn in this way the
cost per customer started. Then we wait and see if users buy those samples. If
they do, will they continue? How much will they buy? How long does it take
for the profit to return our cost of selling?
A test like this may cost $3,000 to $5,000. It is not all lost, even when the
product proves unpopular. Some sales are made. Nearly every test will in
time bring back the entire cost.
Sometimes we find that the cost of the advertising comes back before the
bills are due. That means that the product can be advertised without
investment. Many a great advertiser has been built up without any cost
whatever beyond immediate receipts. That is an ideal situation.
On another product it may take three months to bring back the cost with a
profit. But one is sure of his profit in that time. When he spreads out he must
finance accordingly.
Think what this means. A man has what he considers an advertising
possibility. But national advertising looks so big and expensive that he dare
not undertake it.
There are no expert marketers— only expert testers.
In time, nearly every test recoups costs.
15 l Test campaigns
Now he presents it in a few average towns, at a very modest cost. With
almost no risk whatever. From the few thousands he learns what the millions
will do. Then he acts accordingly. If he then branches out he knows to a
certainty just what his results will be.
He is playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot. If the article is
successful, it may make him millions. If he is mistaken about it, the loss is a
trifle.
These are facts we desire to emphasize and spread. All our largest
accounts are now built in this way, from very small beginnings. When
business men realize that this can be done, hundreds of others will do it. For
countless fortune-earners now lie dormant.
The largest advertiser in the world makes a business of starting such
projects. One by one he finds out winners. Now he has twenty-six, and
together they earn many millions yearly.
These test campaigns have other purposes. They answer countless
questions which arise in business.
A large food advertiser felt that his product would be more popular in
another form. He and all his advisers were certain about it. They were willing
to act on this supposition without consulting the consumers, but wiser advice
prevailed.
He inserted an ad in a few towns with a coupon, good at any store for a
package of the new-style product. Then he wrote to the users about it. They
were almost unanimous in their disapproval.
Later the same product was suggested in still another form. The previous
verdict made the change look dubious. The advertiser hardly thought a test
worthwhile. But he submitted the question to a few thousand women in a
Testing locally manages financial risk
and maps the way
to wider distribution.
Advertising brilliance:
The most successful
advertisers in the world
start with a one-on-one mentality.
1 prospect - > 1 product - > 1 way - > Test - > Tweak
15 l Test campaigns
similar way and 91 per cent voted for it. Now he has a unique product which
promises to largely increase his sales.
These tests cost about $1,000 each. The first one saved him a very costly
mistake. The second will probably bring him large profits.
Then we use test campaigns to try out new methods on advertising already
successful. Thus we constantly seek for better methods, without interrupting
plans already proved out.
In five years for one food advertiser we tried out over fifty separate plans.
Every little while we found an improvement, so the results of our advertising
constantly grew. At the end of five years we found the best plan of all. It
reduced our cost of selling by 75 per cent. That is, it was four times more
effective than the best plan used before.
That is what mail order advertisers do—try out plan after plan to constantly
reduce the cost. Why should any general advertiser be less business-like and
careful?
Another service of the test campaign is this:
An advertiser is doing mediocre advertising. A skilled advertising agent
feels that he can greatly increase results. The advertiser is doubtful. He is
doing fairly well. He has alliances which he hesitates to break. So he is
inclined to let well enough alone.
Now the question can be submitted to the verdict of a test. The new agent
may take a few towns, without interfering with the general campaign. Then
compare his results with the general results and prove his greater skill.
Constantly seek out better sales appeals
through testing.
15 l Test campaigns
Plausible arguments are easy in this line. One man after another comes to
an advertiser to claim superior knowledge or ability. It is hard to decide, and
decisions may be wrong.
Now actual figures gained at a small cost can settle the question definitely.
The advertiser makes no commitment. It is like saying to a salesman, “Go out
for a week and prove.” A large percentage of all the advertising done would
change hands if this method were applied.
Again we come back to scientific advertising. Suppose a chemist would
say in an arbitrary way that this compound was best, or that better. You would
little respect his opinion. He makes tests—sometimes hundreds of tests—to
actually know which is best. He will never state a supposition before he has
proved it. How long before advertisers in general will apply that exactness to
advertising?
Testing is Scientific Advertising!
16 l Leaning on dealers
Chapter 16
Leaning On Dealers
We cannot depend much in most lines on the active help of jobbers or of
dealers. They are busy. They have many lines to consider. The profit on
advertised lines is not generally large. And an advertised article is apt to be
sold at cut prices.
The average dealer does what you would do. He exerts himself on brands
of his own, if at all. Not on another man’s brand.
The dealer will often try to make you think otherwise. He will ask some aid
or concession on the ground of extra effort. Advertisers often give extra
discounts. Or they make loading offers—perhaps one case free in ten—in the
belief that loaded dealers will make extra efforts.
This may be so on rare lines, but not generally. And efforts if made do not
usually increase the total sales. They merely swing trade from one store to
another.
On most lines, making a sale without making a convert does not count for
much. Sales made by conviction—by advertising—are likely to bring
permanent customers. People who buy through casual recommendations do
not often stick. Next time someone else gives other advice.
Revenue which belongs to the advertiser is often given away without
adequate return. These discounts and gifts could be far better spent in
securing new consumers.
Free goods must be sold, and by your own efforts usually. One extra case
with ten means that advertising must sell 10 per cent more to bring you the
Dealers have many interests at heart—
mostly theirs.
16 l Leaning on dealers
same return. The dealer would probably buy just as much if you let him buy
as convenient.
Much money is often frittered away on other forms of dealer help. Perhaps
on window or store displays. A window display, acting as a reminder, may
bring to one dealer a lion’s share of the trade. Yet it may not increase your
total sales at all.
Those are facts to find out. Try one town in one way, one in another.
Compare total sales in those towns. In many lines such tests will show that
costly displays are worthless. A growing number of experienced advertisers
spend no money on displays.
This is all in line of general publicity, so popular long ago. Casting bread
upon the waters and hoping for its return. Most advertising was of that sort
twenty years ago.
Now we put things to the test. We compare cost and result on every form of
expenditure. It is easily done. Very many costly wastes are eliminated by this
modern process.
Scientific advertising has altered many old plans and conceptions. It has
proved many long-established methods to be folly. And why should we not
apply to these things the same criterion we apply to other forms of selling? Or
to manufacturing costs?
Your object in all advertising is to buy new customers at a price which
pays a profit. You have no interest in centering trade at any particular store.
Learn what your consumers cost and what they buy. If they cost you one dollar
each, figure that every wasted dollar costs you a possible customer.
Your business will be built in that way, not by dealer help. You must do
your own selling, make your own success. Be content if dealers fill the orders
Do you offer marketing assistance
to your dealers?
Track the ROI of your efforting.
Compare cost and result
on every form of
business expenditure. (Hopkins called this
‘modern marketing’
in 1923.)
16 l Leaning on dealers
that you bring. Eliminate your wastes. Spend all your ammunition where it
counts for most. Your objective with all advertising is to buy
customers as a price
which pays a profit.
Javier
Production Manager
MACIAS
Meet Javier
Rocks mailhouse, lettershop and digital printing.
Produces franchise coupons… Vehicle Service
Contract brochures… laminated membership cards… QR code promotions and special 3D
packaging. Formerly with ABG Direct. Captains 5
department heads and formidable crew.
Towne Touch: Secretly applies white glove test to outgoing packages.
Ask Javier anything: www.linkedin.com/pub/javier-macias/35/127/745
Time At Towne: 5 ½ years
Improve Your
B-to-B Catalog
5 items experienced catalog marketers
include to boost readership & sales.
1- A personal letter from the CEO to your customers… printed inside the
front cover, or on letterhead.
2- Useful information like “How-To” articles, tables, & charts.
3- Product samples. Techies love
tinkering at their desk.
4- 3-ring binder. Rarely gets trashed,
too bulky for file cabinet, more likely
to be shelved within reach.
5- Customer credits… Just like in the
movies, a list of all the firms that
have bought from you is
impressionable. Whether 50, 100 or 1,000, names in print convey trust.
17 l Individuality
Chapter 17
Individuality
A person who desires to make an impression must stand out in some way
from the masses. And in a pleasing way. Being eccentric, being abnormal is
not a distinction to covet. But doing admirable things in a different way gives
one a great advantage.
So with salesmen, in person or in print. There is uniqueness which belittles
and arouses resentment. There is refreshing uniqueness which enhances,
which we welcome and remember. Fortunate is the salesman who has it.
We try to give each advertiser a becoming style. We make him distinctive,
perhaps not in appearance, but in manner and in tone. He is given an
individuality best suited to the people he addresses.
One man appears rugged and honest in a line where rugged honesty
counts. One may be a good fellow where choice is a matter of favor. In other
lines the man stands out by impressing himself as an authority.
We have already cited a case where a woman made a great success in
selling clothing to girls, solely through a created personality which won.
That’s why we have signed ads sometimes—to give them a personal
authority. A man is talking—a man who takes pride in his accomplishments—
not a “soul-less corporation.” Whenever possible we introduce a personality
into our ads. By making a man famous we make his product famous. When we
claim an improvement, naming the man who made it adds effect.
You must stand out in the right way.
Be enchanting.
Is your individual style
instantly valuable— or does it defy
common sense?
Personality sells. Sign your advertising.
17 l Individuality
Then we take care not to change an individuality which has proved
appealing. Before a man writes a new ad on that line, he gets into the spirit
adopted by the advertiser. He plays a part as an actor plays it.
In successful advertising great pains are taken to never change our tone.
That which won so many is probably the best way to win others. Then people
come to know us. We build on that acquaintance rather than introduce a
stranger in strange guise. People do not know us by name alone, but by looks
and mannerisms. Appearing different every time we meet never builds up
confidence.
Then we don’t want people to think that salesmanship is made to order.
That our appeals are created, studied, artificial. They must seem to come from
the heart, and the same heart always, save where a wrong tack forces a
complete change.
There are winning personalities in ads as well as people. To some we are
glad to listen, others bore us. Some are refreshing, some commonplace. Some
inspire confidence, some caution.
To create the right individuality is a supreme accomplishment. Then an
advertiser’s growing reputation on that line brings him ever-increasing
prestige. Never weary of that part.
Be like an actor playing a role in a movie: consistent.
You can’t sell anyone
by being boring.
18 l Negative Advertising
Chapter 18
Negative Advertising
To attack a rival is never good advertising. Don’t point out others’ faults. It
is not permitted in the best mediums. It is never good policy. The selfish
purpose is apparent. It looks unfair, not sporty. If you abhor knockers, always
appear a good fellow.
Show the bright side, the happy and attractive side, not the dark and
uninviting side of things. Show beauty, not homeliness; health, not sickness.
Don’t show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear.
Your customers know all about the wrinkles.
In advertising a dentifrice, show pretty teeth, not bad teeth. Talk of coming
good conditions, not conditions which exist. In advertising clothes, picture
well-dressed people, not the shabby. Picture successful men, not failures,
when you advertise a business course. Picture what others wish to be, not
what they may be now.
We are attracted by sunshine, beauty, happiness, health, success. Then
point the way to them, not the way out of the opposite.
Picture envied people, not the envious.
Tell people what to do, not what to avoid.
Make your every ad breathe good cheer. We always dodge a Lugubrious
Blue.
Never attack a rival in your advertising.
Use your ads to paint a
picture of your prospect’s happy future—once he has
your product!
Vision pulls. Pain pushes.
Humans prefer to
be pulled along.
18 l Negative Advertising
Assume that people will do what you ask. Say, “Send now for this sample.”
Don’t say, “Why do you neglect this offer?” That suggests that people are
neglecting. Invite them to follow the crowd.
Compare the results of two ads, one negative, one positive. One
presenting the dark side, one the bright side. One warning, the other inviting.
You will be surprised. You will find that the positive ad outpulls the other four
to one, if you have our experience.
The “Before and after taking” ads are follies of the past. They never had a
place save with the afflicted. Never let their memory lead you to picture the
gloomy side of things.
Give your prospect a directive. Show him the
way to heaven with a
cheery call to action.
Patricia
Sales Executive
REINACH Signature Surgery
What makes direct mail (and email) different from other forms of marketing is
the letter—a highly personalized, 1-to1
communication that lets writer and reader
make an emotional connection.
A letter written by an executive then signed by an assistant throws believability
out the window and depresses response.
People pick up a lot from the way a name
is signed. Give your signature’s color, size and vitality close scrutiny.
Compare the average signature of a
publisher with that of Salvador Dali or
Gloria Vanderbilt.
Then ask yourself why the former are
lackluster and the latter so distinctive.
The signature is your salesman’s
handshake.
Make yours healthy.
Meet Patricia
Previously Director of Sales & Marketing in hotel
& hospitality industry. Innovative strategies
skyrocket sales for Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach.
Towne Touch: Passion for consistent results in
fund raising, community volunteering and
leading professional organizations makes for über-resourceful connections in marketplace.
Ask Patricia anything: www.linkedin.com/pub/patricia-reinach/17/728/881
Time At Towne: 1 month
19 l Letter Writing
Chapter 19
Letter Writing
This is another phase of advertising which all of us have to consider. It
enters, or should enter, into nearly all campaigns. Every business man
receives a large number of circular letters. Most of them go direct to the waste
basket. But he acts on others, and others are filed for reference.
Analyze those letters. The ones you act on or the ones you keep have a
headline which attracted your interest. At a glance they offer something that
you want, something you may wish to know.
Remember that point in all advertising.
A certain buyer spends $50,000,000 per year. Every letter, every circular
which comes to his desk gets its deserved attention. He wants information on
the lines he buys.
But we have often watched him. In one minute a score of letters may drop
into the waste basket. Then one is laid aside. That is something to consider at
once. Another is filed under the heading “Varnish.” And later when he buys
varnish that letter will turn up.
That buyer won several prizes by articles on good buying. His articles
were based on information. Yet the great masses of matter which came to him
never got more than a glance.
The same principles apply to all advertising. Letter writers over—look
them just as advertisers do. They fail to get the right attention. They fail to tell
what buyers wish to know.
Circular letters (junk mail) often have the
#1 sales headlines.
B2B advertisers overlook
sales letters to their
own peril.
19 l Letter Writing
One magazine sends out millions of letters annually. Some to get
subscriptions, some to sell books. Before the publisher sends out five million
letters he puts a few thousands to test. He may try twenty-five letters, each
with a thousand prospects. He learns what results will cost. Perhaps the plan is
abandoned because it appears unprofitable. If not, the letter which pays best
is the letter that he uses.
Just as men are doing now in all scientific advertising.
Mail order advertisers do likewise. They test their letters as they test their
ads. A general letter is never used until it proves itself best among many by
actual returns.
Letter writing has much to do with advertising. Letters to inquirers, follow-
up letters. Wherever possible they should be tested. Where that is not
possible, they should be based on knowledge gained by tests.
We find the same difference in letters as in ads. Some get action, some do
not. Some complete a sale, some forfeit the impression gained. These letters,
going usually to half-made converts, are tremendously important.
Experience generally shows that a two-cent letter gets no more attention
than a one-cent letter. Fine stationery no more than poor stationery. The whole
appeal lies in the matter.
It has been found that fine stationery and pamphlets lessen the effect. They
indicate an effort to sell on other lines than merit. That has the same effect in
letters as in ads.
A letter which goes to an inquirer is like a salesman going to an interested
prospect. You know what created that interest. Then follow it up along that
Advertising and million
dollar industries have much
to do with letter writing.
ROI depends on the sales
appeal of your messaging (not fancy stationary or
1st class postage).
19 l Letter Writing
line, not on some different argument. Complete the impression already
created. Don’t undertake another on a guess.
In a letter as in ads, the great point is to get immediate action. People are
naturally dilatory. They postpone, and a postponed action is too often
forgotten.
Do something if possible to get immediate action. Offer some inducement
for it. Or tell what delay may cost. Note how many successful selling letters
place a limit on an offer. It expires on a certain date. That is all done to get a
prompt decision, to overcome the tendency to delay.
A mail order advertiser offered a catalog. The inquirer might send for
three or four similar catalogs. He had that competition in making a sale.
So he wrote a letter when he sent his catalog, and enclosed a personal
card. He said, “You are a new customer, and we want to make you welcome.
So when you send your order please enclose this card. The writer wants to see
that you get a gift with the order—something you can keep.”
With an old customer he gave some other reason for the gift. The offer
aroused curiosity. It gave preference to his catalog. Without some compelling
reason for ordering elsewhere, the woman sent the order to him. The gift paid
for itself several times over by bringing larger sales per catalog.
The ways for getting action are many. Rarely can one way be applied to
two lines. But the principles are universal. Strike while the iron is hot. Get a
decision then. Have it followed by prompt action when you can.
You can afford to pay for prompt action rather than lose by delay. One
advertiser induced hundreds of thousands of women to buy six packages of
his product and send him the trademarks, to secure a premium offer good
only for one week.
Limited offers help inspire prompt decisions.
Using intelligent curiosity arouses energy.
20 l A Name That Helps
Chapter 20
A Name That Helps
There is great advantage in a name that tells a story. The name is usually
prominently displayed. To justify the space it occupies, it should aid the
advertising. Some such names are almost complete advertisements in
themselves. May Breath is such a name. Cream of Wheat is another. That
name alone has been worth a fortune. Other examples are Dutch Cleanser,
Cuticura, Dyanshine, Minute Tapioca, 3-in-One Oil, Holeproof, Alcorub, etc.
Such names may be protected, yet the name itself describes the product,
so it makes a valuable display.
Other coined names are meaningless. Some examples are Kodak, Karo,
Mazda, Sapolio, Vaseline, Kotex, Lux, Postum, etc. They can be protected, and
long-continued advertising may give them a meaning. When this is
accomplished they become very valuable. But the great majority of them
never attain that status.
Such names do not aid the advertising. It is very doubtful if they justify
display. The service of the product, not the name, is the important thing in
advertising. A vast amount of space is wasted in displaying names and
pictures which tell no selling story. The tendency of modern advertising is to
eliminate this waste.
Other coined names signify ingredients which anyone may use. Examples
are Syrup of Figs, Cocoanut Oil Shampoo, Tar Soap, Palmolive Soap, etc.
Such products may dominate a market if the price is reasonable, but they
must to a degree meet competition. They invite substitution. They are
3-in-One Oil, Holeproof, Cream of Wheat . . .
There is a great advantage in a name that tells a story.
Names can make or
break sales. Learn how
to name products.
20 l A Name That Helps
naturally classified with other products which have like ingredients, so the
price must remain in that class.
Toasted Corn Flakes and Malted Milk are examples of unfortunate names.
In each of those cases one advertiser created a new demand. When the
demand was created, others shared it because they could use the name. The
originators depended only on a brand. It is interesting to speculate on how
much more profitable a coined name might have been.
On a patented product it must be remembered that the right to a name
expires with the patent. Names like Castoria, Aspirin, Shredded Wheat
Biscuit, etc., have become common property.
This is a very serious point to consider. It often makes a patent an
undesirable protection.
Another serious fault in coined names is frivolity. In seeking uniqueness
one gets something trivial. And that is a fatal handicap in a serious product. It
almost prohibits respect.
When a product must be called by a common name, the best auxiliary
name is a man’s name. It is much better than a coined name, for it shows that
some man is proud of his creation.
Thus the question of a name is of serious importance in laying the
foundations of a new undertaking. Some names have become the chief factors
in success. Some have lost for their originators four-fifths of the trade they
developed.
Toasted Corn Flakes and Malted Milk are examples
of unfortunate names.
Frivolity and triviality
are poor characteristics for product names.
Debora
Executive Vice President, General Manager
GRIFFITH $64,000 Questions
The difference between average and
exceptional is in the details. When you’re looking for excellence in fulfillment, you
need to know the small secrets of
fulfillment make all the difference in your
business.
These are the top money questions…
Which marketing question(s) does your
fulfillment answer?
Are your orders processed in real-time?
Can you access order and inventory
reports 24/7?
Can you track mail stream ‘at a glance’?
Who’s auditing inventory control for just-in-time delivery?
How much are you shelling out for every
order you fulfill?
What is the LTV of your customer?
… do you know the answers?
Meet Javier Meet Deb
Mail and fulfillment expertise spans Finance,
Customer Service, Systems and Operations (two
decades). Account management credits include Crystal Cruises, Wyndham Hotels, Blue Shield
and Sprint. Loves solving client issues both
externally and internally. Master Certificate
Integrated Marketing (UC San Francisco) and
M.B.A. (CSU Monterey Bay) ensures whole brain thinking.
Towne Touch: Every challenge has a resolution,
absolutely.
Ask Deb anything:
www.linkedin.com/in/deboragriffith
Time At Towne: 15 years
21 l Good Business
Chapter 21
Good Business
A rapid stream ran by the writer’s boyhood home. The stream
turned a wooden wheel and the wheel ran a mill. Under that
primitive method, all but a fraction of the stream’s potentiality
went to waste.
Then someone applied scientific methods to that stream—put
in a turbine and dynamos. Now, with no more water, no more
power, it runs a large manufacturing plant.
We think of that stream when we see wasted advertising
power. And we see it everywhere—hundreds of examples.
Enormous potentialities—millions of circulation—used to turn a
mill-wheel. While others use that same power with manifold effect.
We see countless ads running year after year which we know
to be unprofitable. Men spending five dollars to do what one
dollar might do. Men getting back 30 per cent of their cost when
they might get 150 per cent. And the facts could be easily proved.
We see wasted space, frivolity, clever conceits, entertainment.
Costly pages filled with palaver which, if employed by a
salesman, would reflect on his sanity. But those ads are always
unkeyed. The money is spent blindly, merely to satisfy some
advertising whim.
Not new advertisers only. Many an old advertiser has little or
no idea of his advertising results. The business is growing through
Wasted energy
in advertising is
a serious problem.
Scientific Advertising is your turbine engine
to success.
21 l Good Business
many efforts combined, and advertising is given its share of the
credit.
An advertiser of many years’ standing, spending as high as
$700,000 per year, told the writer he did not know whether his
advertising was worth anything or not. Sometimes he thought that
his business would be just as large without it.
The writer replied, “I do know. Your advertising is utterly
unprofitable, and I could prove it to you in one week. End an ad
with an offer to pay five dollars to anyone who writes you that he
read the ad through. The scarcity of replies will amaze you.”
Think what a confession—that millions of dollars are being
spent without knowledge of results. Such a policy applied to all
factors in a business would bring ruin in short order.
You see other ads which you may not like as well. They may
seem crowded or verbose. They are not attractive to you, for you
are seeking something to admire, something to entertain. But you
will note that those ads are keyed. The advertiser knows that they
pay. The probability is that out of scores of traced ads the type
which you see has paid best.
Many other ads which are not keyed now were keyed at the
beginning. They are based on known statistics. They won on a
small scale before they ever ran on a large scale. Those
advertisers are utilizing their enormous powers in full.
Advertising is prima facie evidence that the man who pays
believes that advertising is good. It has brought great results to
others, it must be good for him. So he takes it like some secret
Claude’s Reality Check:
“Run an ad with an offer to pay
five dollars to anyone who writes
you that he read the ad through.
“The scarcity of replies will
amaze you.”
Advertising is irrefutable evidence
that the man who pays believes your ads are good.
21 l Good Business
tonic which others have endorsed. If the business thrives, the tonic
gets the credit. Otherwise, the failure is due to fate.
That seems almost unbelievable. Even a storekeeper who
inserts a twenty-dollar ad knows whether it pays or not. Every line
of a big store’s ad is charged to the proper department. And
every inch used must the next day justify its cost.
Yet most national advertising is done without justification. It is
merely presumed to pay. A little test might show a way to multiply
returns.
Such methods, still so prevalent, are not very far from their
end. The advertising men who practice them see the writing on
the wall. The time is fast coming when men who spend money are
going to know what they get. Good business and efficiency will be
applied to advertising. Men and methods will be measured by the
known returns, and only competent men can survive.
Only one hour ago an old advertising man said to the writer,
“The day for our type is done. Bunk has lost its power. Sophistry is
being displaced by actuality. And I tremble at the trend.”
So do hundreds tremble. Enormous advertising is being done
along scientific lines. Its success is common knowledge.
Advertisers along other lines will not much longer be content.
We who can meet the test welcome these changed conditions.
Advertisers will multiply when they see that advertising can be
safe and sure. Small expenditures made on a guess will grow to
big ones on a certainty. Our line of business will be finer, cleaner,
when the gamble is removed. And we shall be prouder of it when
we are judged on merit.
Most national advertising is run on presumption with
no justification.
Businesses that meet
the test of advertising
along scientific lines will welcome the
changed conditions.
Follow
my brand
behavior
s and win
at the
shelf
1. Avoid boring advertising
2. Always think of your customer’s best interest
3. Educate your customers
4. Tell your entire story
5. Offer service rather than ask for sales
6. Find the right psychological appeal
7. Personalize your company or products
8. Name your product really, really well
9. Give your product a persona
10. Promote benefits rather than features
11. Offer a free trial or sample and make money off back-end repeat sales
12. Dare your customers to try your competitors
13. Use “Reason Why” advertising
14. Make use of free publicity
15. Develop products customers want
16. Promote positive benefits people want most
17. Establish credibility by providing a real reason to believe you
18. Appeal to social proof for credibility
19. Offer a risk-free, money back guarantee
20. Test lots of things & measure results
21. Be natural and simple; use the shortest words possible
22. Run a campaign for as long as it keeps working
23. Never give up
Follow my brand behaviors
and win at the shelf
Clip & Post Me!
“If there’s a mail or fulfillment benefit—
we know about it. If it’s never been done before,
we may even invent it.”
Towne AllPoints combines sixty years of scientific thinking with a personable,
fun-loving integrity to help companies manage document, package, and product delivery without losing their money or their mind.
We mail and fulfill orders all day long, every day
From self-mailers, postcards and billing statements, to custom 3D pieces,
trendy door hangers and gourmet coffee, we get a thrill out of taking orders
and shipping stuff for companies in the marketing, advertising, tradeshow, hospitality, non-profit, political, entertainment, publishing, automotive,
healthcare, fitness and financial industries.
A few helpful reasons clients call us for 1 specialized mailing and
stay for decades:
Liberty ~ Get the highest performing postal discounts possible
Freedom ~ Be done with your fulfillment set up within 7 days
Personalization ~ Reach every Tom, Dick and Harry with “Just For Me”
messaging as we slice and dice variable data in seemingly infinite ways
Precision ~ MERLIN Magic audits pesky USPS regulations with lightning-
fast accuracy
Space ~ Bring us your pallets, your catalogs, your sweepstakes giveaways: your inventory is safe in our 125,000 sq. ft. warehousing
Ease ~ Our methods for assembling, addressing, inserting, labeling,
digital printing and 100 other line items of your complex mailing work
Accountability ~ Trace, track and control your mail stream with push-button technology
Money ~ Since we’re experts at how the game is played . . . you get to
keep more of the green
One phone call. One experience. One place.
You owe it to yourself to have a terrific mail stream experience . . . all along
the way. After sixty years of doing one thing, we’ve got the talent, technology
and technique perfected to a “T”. Call 714.540.3095. Let’s maximize your mail
stream today.
Maximize Your Mail Stream
With 60 Years of Perfection
3441 W MacArthur Blvd | Santa Ana | Ca | 92704
Team Towne Recipe Collection
GOOD EATS
Volume One
Bag of precut and washed Romaine lettuce
1 container of crumbled Feta Cheese
1 small bag of Pine Nuts
1 bag of dried cranberries
Briana’s Blush Wine Vinaigrette dressing
Optional: add 1 chopped apple, strawberries or any fruit of your choosing.
Mix all and add dressing to taste.
Cranberries & Pine Nuts Salad
“Each Bite Will Leave You . . . Less Hungry”
WHAT’S COOKING WITH DEB?
GOURMET IN A PINCH
1 cup Bisquick Baking Mix
2/3 cup milk
½ cup shredded Cheddar cheese
¼ cup butter or margarine, melted
½ tsp Garlic powder
Heat oven to 450 degrees. In large bowl, combine baking mix, milk and cheese. Stir until soft dough forms. Beat vigorously for 30 seconds. Drop dough by spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. In a small bowl, mix margarine and garlic powder. Brush over warm biscuits.
Cheese Garlic Biscuits
10 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 pint cottage cheese
1 lb grated Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 cup melted butter (or margarine)
7 oz can diced green chiles
In a large bowl, start with the eggs and mix in each ingredient, using a stiff wire whisk.
Pour into 9" x 13" glass pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 min.
Let set 5 minutes before serving.
Eggs La Grande
WHAT’S COOKING WITH ALLISON?
DOUBLE ALLURE
Salsa Cheese Dip
1 lb Shredded Cheddar & Monterey Jack cheese
5 green onions chopped fine
1 sm. can chopped olives
1 sm. can chopped green chilies
2 tomatoes chopped
Parsley – chopped
Cilantro - chopped
8 oz bottle Lawry's Italian dressing w/ parmesan
Mix and chill
Best served cold w/chips
7 oz can white tuna, drained & flaked
6 tbs mayonnaise or salad dressing
1 tbs Parmesan cheese
3 tbs sweet pickle relish
1/8 tsp dried minced onion flakes
1/4 tsp curry powder
1 tbs dried parsley
1 tsp dried dill will
1 pinch garlic powder
In a medium bowl, stir together the tuna, mayonnaise, Parmesan cheese, and onion flakes.
Season with curry powder, parsley, dill and garlic powder. Mix well and serve with crackers or on a sandwich.
Tangy Tuna
WHAT’S COOKING WITH JENNYFER?
TWAANG PEAKS
WHAT’S COOKING WITH NICOLE?
IRRESISTIBLE
WHAT’S COOKING WITH KEVIN?
GENTLEMEN’S DELIGHT
***Garnishes*** Chopped scallions Sour cream Shredded Cheddar cheese Brown the beef and sausages in a large Dutch oven. Remove the meat and reserve. Drain off the fat, reserving about two tablespoons. Sauté the onions and garlic until translucent, about 7 minutes. Add the cumin, paprika and chili powder. Add the tomatoes and the beef into the Dutch oven. Stir the whole pot, and simmer on the stove for about 1 1/2 hours. Add the three cans of beans, and simmer for another 30 minutes. Serve with dishes of chopped scallions, sour cream and shredded Cheddar cheese.
Chili With Beans & Sausage
2 lbs chuck steak, cubed in bite-size pieces
1 lb hot Italian sausage, removed from casings
2 large onions, diced
12 cloves garlic, diced
1 tbs cumin
1 tbs paprika
1 tbs pure chili powder
32 oz can crushed tomatoes
16 oz can pinto beans
16 oz can black beans
16 oz can dark red kidney beans
1/4 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 lb Gorgonzola dolce cheese
Salt and fresh ground pepper
1 lb penne pasta
1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts
Fresh ground nutmeg to taste
Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add cream and Gorgonzola. Cook until the cheese melts completely, stirring continuously. Season with salt and pepper. In a large pot of boiling water, cook penne until al dente-tender (tender to the touch with a slight resistance in the center when the pasta is chewed). Drain and toss with Gorgonzola cream sauce. Garnish with toasted walnuts and nutmeg. Serves 4. Nifty Tips: Using 6-8 quarts of water per pound of penne dilutes starch (so pasta doesn't stick). Add salt to water after it comes to a boil; add pasta when water returns to a boil.
Glorious Penne & Gorgonzola
PASTA PASSION
WHAT’S COOKING WITH PATRICIA?
5 lb watermelon
1 Vidalia or other sweet onion
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
6 whole mint sprigs
Cut the flesh from the melon and cut into bite size pieces, removing and discarding the seeds, and set aside. Peel and slice the onion into rings.
In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, salt, pepper, and whisk until salt is dissolved. Slowly whisk in the olive oil, a few drops at a time. Add in the chopped mint, taste, and adjust seasonings.
In a large bowl, combine the melon, onion, and feta. Pour the dressing over the melon mixture and toss gently until everything is coated and evenly mixed. Garnish with mint sprigs.
To serve, divide salad among individual plates and garnish with mint leaves.
WHAT’S COOKING WITH JAVIER?
GOURMET IN A PINCH DUEX
Watermelon Salad With Mint Leaves
1 fudge brownie mix (13-inch x 9-inch pan size)
2 packages (13 ounces each) miniature peanut butter cups
4 cups cold 2% milk
2 packages (5.1 ounces each) instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup creamy peanut butter
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 8-oz cartons frozen whipped topping, thawed
Prepare brownie batter according to package directions. Bake in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking pan at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with moist crumbs (do not over bake). Cool on a wire rack; cut into 3/4-in. pieces. Cut peanut butter cups in half; set aside 1/3 cup for garnish. In a large bowl, whisk milk and pudding mixes for 2 minutes (mixture will be thick). Add peanut butter and vanilla; mix well. Fold in 1-1/2 cartons whipped topping. Place a third of the brownies in a 5-qt. glass bowl; top with a third of the remaining peanut butter cups. Spoon a third of the pudding mixture over the top. Repeat layers twice. Cover with remaining whipped topping; garnish with reserved peanut butter cups. Refrigerate until chilled.
WHAT’S COOKING WITH NETTIE?
HEAVEN IN A BOWL
Peanut Butter Brownie Trifle
WHAT’S COOKING WITH ELENA?
TURN UP THE HEAT
Roasting the veggies . . . Roast the tomatoes, peppers, and garlic over an open flame until the skins are charred and the meat is soft. Veggies require different roasting time so be sure to keep an eye on them to prevent burning. Place the roasted tomatoes and peppers in a plastic bag, seal the bag and let sit for about one hour. This step helps the tomatoes and peppers sweat the skins off. (Save bag juices to thin salsa later if desired.)
Slip the skins from the tomatoes and peppers; discard along with the pepper seeds. Rough chop all the veggies.
Grinding the salsa. . . Begin by placing sales into the molcajete. (Salt helps break down the ingredients). Add one tomatoe, a few peppers, and a clove of garlic. Begin to grind the ingredients by squeezing them with the stone handle against the stone wall of the molcajete. Continue to add ingredients a few at a time. Grind to desired consistency. Spoon in the cilantro, onions, lime juice and mix. Sample & add a pinch of salt to taste. Serve as gourmet ketchup over eggs, potatoes, burgers, tacos . . . or serve with home-made tortilla strips, guacamole, and fresh lime margaritas.
2 Habanaro peppers
1/2 onion (finely chopped)
1/2 bunch cilantro (finely chopped)
Juice of 1 lime
Salt (for lining molcajete and to taste)
4 large tomatoes
4 Jalapeno peppers
4 Serrano peppers
4 Chile Guero peppers
4 garlic cloves
Authentic Salsa de Molcajete