Great Moments in Advertising Part I
The Powers Principles
126-year-old secret for exploding
your response and revenues
and why it works better than ever right now today!
PLUS …
- What it really takes to excel in this biz (and a somewhat startling admission of a petty crime) …
- What Get-Rich-Quick Quacks don’t want you to know …
- And much, MUCH MORE!
Dear Business-Builder,
Some argue that the prize for the world’s shortest book should be awarded to The Complete Guide to French Military Victories. I hear it contains only one page: One blank page.
They’re wrong, of course. There are many other books just as short. A library of micro-mini reads might include these (in no particular order) …
The World’s Shortest Books
- How to Pleasure a Woman – by Mike Tyson
- Words I’ve Never Mispernounced – by George W. Bush
- Pacifist’s Guide to World Domination – by Cindy Shehan
- Things I’ve NEVER Lied About – by Bill Clinton
- Prudent Shotgun Handling – Dick Cheney
- Why America Is Just THE BEST – The Dixie Chicks
- Things I Absolutely Love About President Bush – Michael Moore
… OK – I made those up.
These “world’s shortest books”
I found on the ‘Net:
- My Strategy for Finding the Real Killer by O.J. Simpson [Forward by Scott Peterson]
- To All the Men We’ve Loved Before by Ellen DeGeneres & Rosie O’Donnell
- The Book of Baby Names – by George Foreman
- My Beauty Secrets – by Janet Reno [Forward by Madeleine Albright]
- Things I Love About Bill – Hillary Clinton [Forward by Ann Coulter]
Even OUR industry has a “world shortest book”!
… Directory of VERIFIED Overnight Direct Response Millionaires A documented listing of all the business owners, marketers and copywriters who REALLY DID get rich immediately after reading a book, taking a course or attending a seminar on “How to Get Rich Quick in Direct Response”.
My guess is that book is even shorter than The Amish Guide to Computer Maintenance!
Now, I could be wrong here. Maybe there is a lucky genius somewhere who really did strike it instantly and effortlessly rich in this biz. One thing I do know though: It sure isn’t Gary Bencivenga, Jim Rutz, Arthur Johnson or Eric Betuel.
Nor is it Parris Lampropoulos, Kent Komae, Carline Anglade-Cole, Brad Petersen Bob Hutchinson, John Carlton, David Deutsch, Kim Schwalm, Bob Bly, Belinda Brewster, Daniel Levis, Brien Lundin – or any other top six- or seven-figure writer I know.
… And it SURE as heck AIN’T ME!
What it really takes to excel in this biz
(and a somewhat startling admission of a petty crime) …
Every copywriter, every marketing exec and every small– and home-based business owner I know has worked his or her butt to the bone for years to achieve the success they enjoy today.
Not one of these luminaries thought it below them to start small – perhaps with a 9-to-5 job as a pathetically paid junior copywriter at a local radio station, newspaper or ad agency.
Each one paid his or her dues … suffered under obnoxious bosses … burned the midnight oil … overcame enormous obstacles … endured countless setbacks and failures … and when faced with adversity, found the courage, optimism and energy to fight through.
Heck. In my earliest days in this business, I went more than a year without a single control. Money got so tight, there were months when I had to dash downtown to make emergency cash payments just to keep the water running, the lights on and the phone working.
Once I got so short of cash, the only way to feed my family was to resort to a petty crime: The old check-kiting dodge.
(In the days when it took three days for a check to clear, you’d write a check at the grocery store, wait two days, then cash another check at another store and deposit that money in the bank to make sure the first one cleared – and then continue repeating the whole process until a client was kind enough to pay an invoice.)
And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts if you ask any other successful direct response pro, he or she will gladly tell you stories that will even top that!
What the Get-Rich-Quick Quacks don’t want you to know …
So why are folks so quick to believe hypesters who paint pictures of fast and easy even instantaneous, effortless and automatic direct response riches?
Could be their Mamas never taught them what my Mama taught me:
“Nothing worth having comes easy.”
“Failure is the down-payment required for success.”
“Winners never quit; quitters never win.”
Could be a cultural thing, too. The cradle-to-grave political mindset championed in the news media and glorified by Hollywood seems to have convinced many that the world does, in fact, owe them a living. Which really means the federal government does. Which really means that you and I do.
Plus, I suspect the fast-food mentality permeating our society (delayed gratification is evil – instant gratification is your constitutional right!) has probably convinced some folks that they deserve to get living the world owes them WITHOUT DELAY.
And that sets them up to be pocket-picked patsies for anyone promising instant riches with little or no work.
Now my subscribers are, I’m proud to say, smarter than the average bear (you, especially!)
Not only that, you are amazingly kind. After a single year of publishing The Total Package, our testimonial file consists of 72 tightly condensed, single-spaced pages.
But just in case you happen to print this issue to read later … and just in case it falls a stranger’s hands, let’s make sure HE understands what the Get-Rich-Quick Quacks will never tell him …
- The world does not owe you or anybody else a living. And it especially does not owe you riches quick, slow or otherwise.
- Nobody but you can make you rich. You’re going to have to do this yourself.
- There is no guaranteed fast or effortless way to do this. Realizing a big dream like yours will take intense study … laser-like focus … buckets of skull-sweat … the dedication of a golden retriever … unlimited uncompensated overtime … the persistence of a buzzing housefly … the patience of Job … the risk tolerance of a riverboat gambler … and the eternal optimism of Forest Gump.
- Do it anyway. It’s worth it. In spades. And getting there is more than half the fun.
How firm is YOUR foundation for success?
I’m telling you all this to make a very important point a point that not only determines whether you ultimately achieve your professional objectives, but also how fast you’ll be sipping Dom and scarfing down the caviar …
See, at the American Writers and Artists’ Institute conference last year and also at my own Power Marketing Summit this year, I asked the audiences “How many of you have read the masters?” – and then named the pioneers who invented, discovered or perfected the most potent marketing and copywriting principles on the planet.
Only a few hands elevated above the sea of bewildered faces.
My heart immediately sank. What a tragedy! Everybody in those audiences spent thousands of dollars to attend our conferences. Everyone there had spent hundreds – in some cases, thousands more on our books, teleseminars and courses to advance their direct response marketing and copywriting skills.
But judging from the meager show of hands, only about one in ten had ever invested the money or time to study the guys who actually invented our business!
So with this issue, I’m starting a new series on the history of advertising in general and the work of The Masters in particular. Every few weeks from now on, I’ll add the next chapter.
My mission is simple: To make you a better marketer, copychief or copywriter with each installment.
I promise.
Ready? Here goes …
In the beginning …
Cracks me up when I see folks who seem to believe advertising is an American invention. Fact is, it’s been with us as long as people have bought, sold and traded with one another.
If you had taken a stroll down a busy street in downtown Babylon five thousand years ago, you’d have seen some of the first known instances of advertising all over the place – a bush over a wine shop door, for example.
Ancient Egyptians are famous for carving ads onto stone tablets and also introduced the world’s first billboards: Pillars along the roadside which often advertised rewards for runaway slaves.
The Egyptians put ads on paper, too – like this one, found on an ancient papyrus …
“The man slave Shem having run away from his good master, Hapu the Weaver, all good citizens of Thebes are enjoined to help return him. He is a Hittite, 5’2” tall, of ruddy complexion and brown eyes.
“For news of his whereabouts half a gold coin is offered.
“And for his return to the shop of Hapu, the Weaver, where the best cloth is woven to your desire, a whole gold coin is offered.”
I love that ad. Good old Hapu the Weaver needed his slave returned, but he couldn’t resist inserting a plug for his shop: “ …where the best cloth is woven to your desire …”
The entrepreneurial spririt never changes. Heck. That copy sounds like something Hopkins, Caples or Ogilvy might have written.
Priceless.
At any rate, the ancient Greeks and Romans continued the advertising tradition. The Classical world is littered with signs advertising taverns, property for rent, even – er houses of ill rupute.
The Greeks introduced the concept of the town crier – a guy who’d wander around your neighborhood shouting about some product his client was trying to sell.
The effect was kinda like watching today’s TV ads, only without the volume control or on-off switch.
I expect Greek town criers got more than their share of rocks thrown at them – which come to think of it, probably turned out to be the precursors of the modern remote control.
In 1472, moveable type made mass print advertising possible – and the English took to it like ducks to water. The first English handbill – advertising a prayer book appeared on church doors that very same year.
By the 1600s, ads began populating the pages of British newspapers – the first offering a reward for the return of twelve stolen horses. It must have worked – because it lit an explosion of newspaper advertising that continued for nearly a century – until the early 1700s when some idiotic monarch, politician or bureaucrat imposed an exorbitant tax on advertisers.
Fortunately, our American politicians weren’t quite as moronic as their brethren in London – so no advertising tax was imposed here. As a result, the Colonies quickly replaced jolly old England as the stage upon which most advertising innovations would make their entrances.
The first newspaper ad in the U.S. appeared in 1704, and the first known magazine ad appeared in Ben Franklin’s The General Magazine in 1741.
Now, most of these early American ads were pretty basic. They were generally undesigned, featured the atrocious, “make-it-up-as-you-go” spelling in vogue at the time (our forefatherf fpelling ftunk), and made no pretense at being anything but what they were.
Most simply listed product features. If someone was selling a piece of land for example, the ad would cite the location, what it was suitable for, its size, and price. Ads for manufactured products told what they were made of and what they did. A nail was two inches long. A plow was made of wood and steel.
An all-too familiar problem arises …
By 1880 – 177 years after those first American print ads appeared – advertisers had a serious problem. There were so many ads in every newspaper, consumers couldn’t possibly read them all – even if they wanted to; which they didn’t, of course, so they didn’t (sound familiar?).
So along comes the irascible John E. Powers – former publisher of The Nation Magazine, the world’s first professional copywriter and our vocation’s patron saint with an idea.
Instead of listing product features like everyone else did – or outlandish, unbelievable claims as some had taken to doing Powers began writing ads that:
- Presented the arrival of a new product in his client’s store (Wanamaker’s), as front-page news written in a similar style to other headlines and subheads in the local paper …
- Did so in short, brutally honest, consise, frill-free, “just-the-facts-ma’am” copy. “Fine writing,” said Powers, “is offensive.”
Once when asked to write an ad for Wanamaker’s, his copy read, "We have a lot of rotten gossamers and things we want to get rid of." The ad sold out the lot in hours.
As the story goes, when a reporter from an advertising publication entitled Printers' Ink asked Powers for an interview, it was short and sweet:
Powers: "I don't care for an interview."
Reporter: "Do you read Printers' Ink?"
Powers: "Never read any of those advertising publications. They ain't worth reading."
Reporter: "Well… how do you go about writing your copy?"
Powers: "The first thing one must do to succeed in advertising is to have the attention of the reader. That means to be interesting."
"The next thing is to stick to the truth, and that means rectifying whatever's wrong in the merchant's business. If the truth isn't tellable, fix it so it is. That is about all there is to it."
Long story short: Consumers read Powers ads, believed them, went to Wanamaker’s and promptly doubled the store’s sales to $8 million a year (more than $158 million in today’s dollars!)
Mr. Powers did OK for himself too. Not only did he become the world’s first professional copywriter, he became the world’s first six-figure copywriter. The success of his “News-Of-The-Store” approach won him a salary of more than $200,000 a year (today’s dollars).
Powers explained his approach this way:
“Print the news of the store. No ‘catchy headings,’ … no smartness, no brag, no ‘fine writing,’ no fooling, no foolery, no attempt at advertising, no anxiety to sell, no mercenary admiration; hang up the goods in the papers, one at a time, a few today, tomorrow the same or others.”
Would YOU run an ad like this one?
In My Life in Advertising, Claude Hopkins tells a great story about Powers — a story with implications of everything you’re working right now, today …
“A clothing concern was on the verge of bankruptcy,” says Hopkins. “They called in Powers, and he immediately measured up the situation. He said: ‘There is only one way out. Tell the truth. Tell the people that you are bankrupt and that your only way to salvation lies through large and immediate sales.’
“The clothing dealers argued that such an announcement would bring every creditor to their doors. But Powers said: ‘No matter. Either tell the truth or I quit.’
“Their next day’s ad read something like this:
"We are bankrupt.
"We owe $125,000 more than we can pay. This announcement will bring our creditors down on our necks. But if you come and buy tomorrow we shall have the money to meet them. If not, we go to the wall. These are the prices we are quoting to meet the situation."
“Truth was then such a rarity in advertising that this announcement created a sensation. People flocked by the thousands to buy, and the store was saved.”
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
Powers’ breakthrough is as effective today as it was 126 years ago – and suggests three ultra-powerful sales techniques with the potential to ramp up your response and revenues right now – today …
1) News sells. Power’s innovation – presenting your ad as if it were a front-page news story … and then telling “the news of the store” in an objective, straight-forward, no-nonsense way – is still a powerful way to get attention and establish credibility. But it’s only the tip of this iceberg.
Topicality – tying your major theme, headline and opening copy to an event that’s at the top of the news is one of the nuclear weapons of the marketing world.
I’ve had scores of opportunities to test this writing for investment newsletters. In test after test, the timely, newsy test panels – focusing on a major on-going news story – left evergreen straight benefit and USP leads in the dust.
Why? Because if it’s in the news, your prospect is thinking about it. If he’s thinking about it, he has feelings about it. Connect with those feelings, and you’ll make your copy nearly irrestible.
Next time you choose a theme or write a headline or lead, ask yourself, “What important, long-running news story could I hitch a ride on?”
2) Always have a reason. Always, always, ALWAYS. Explain why you’re writing this ad (or advertorial) … why you created the product … why you’ve decided to offer your discount – maybe even how you arrived at the amount of your discount … why you’ve decided to “bribe” your prospect with a premium and why this premium … why you need the prospect to order in the next 24 hours or the next 10 days.
Have a solid, believable, even self-revealing answer for these questions, and your credibility will soar – along with your response.
3) When everyone else in your market is writing unbelievable “blind-‘em-with-bullshit” headlines and ads, the simple objective, unvarnished truth in a headline lifts you head and shoulders above the din. Self-revealing themes and headlines – revealing a non-fatal flaw about yourself, your business or even in some cases about your product are refreshing. Admitting a past failure is a great way to billboard your superiority today.
More than that: Showing a vulnerable side immediately endears you to your readers … evokes feelings of empathy … makes everything else you have to say 100% believable … validates your guarantee … and establishes you as a transaction partner your prospect can trust.
Plenty to chew on this week – see you again in seven short days!
Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,
Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
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