“I Can Tell You What Advertising Is, I Know You Don’t Know”
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It doesn’t matter if you learned advertising and marketing from a textbook or from binge watching every season of Mad Men.
I’m betting you can’t tell me who wrote these words that wound up launching what was arguably one of the most successful and influential advertising careers in history.
His name was John E. Kennedy (not the US President) and the Reason Why (Easter Egg) you’ve probably never heard of him is because Kennedy wrote those words on a notepad way back in 1904.
This isn’t meant to be a history lesson, knowing names and dates won’t help you write more persuasively, so I’m not going to dig any deeper than those facts.
You’re probably thinking that nothing Kennedy did over 100 years ago could possibly have any relevance today.
Because today’s consumers are so much more sophisticated than those rubes back then.
You couldn’t be more wrong, his secret is just as groundbreaking today is it was back then.
In fact, with the crap that passes as advertising today, it’s even more important now.
Today’s consumers are under constant bombardment from every direction.
They’re being “sold” to 24/7/365 and if you don’t understand this basic, basic, basic concept, you’re lost.
What was Kennedy’s secret?
“Advertising is Salesmanship in print.”
Stop.
Think about that phrase.
Let it sink in.
Done?
Let’s chew on it a little more.
Kennedy wrote advertising copy in an age where your choices were basically, newspapers, magazines, billboards and direct-mail.
Or maybe this:
source
No internet, no Facebook or Twitter or Youtube, not even TV or radio.
The first federal broadcasting license for a radio station was issued on November 2, 1920.
Everything was PRINT!
And it had to do the work of a salesman.
It had to get the customer’s attention, deliver the product’s message and close the sale without ever actually having direct contact with them.
Direct Mail, i.e.letters, sorry, snail mail takes 1-3 days to be delivered across town today.
It took even longer 100 years ago.
And yet, the few, really successful advertisers who understood this concept were REALLY SUCCESSFUL.
Kennedy was hired at Lord &Thomas in 1904 for an unbelievable $52,000 a year.
Adjusting for inflation from 1904 – 2016, that was the equivalent of $1,348,339.37 A YEAR!
He left Lord & Thomas to go it alone in 1907 but returned as a freelancer in 1911 and in 1912 his book “Reason Why Advertising” was published.
It’s available in the public domain now.
If you’re smart, you’ll read it and figure out how to apply it in today’s world.
And you'll begin looking at every piece of ad copy you write from the perspective of, "Is this really doing the work of a sales-person?"
This is the first of a series of posts I’ll be making with the hopes of passing along some of the huge amount of info on advertising and marketing I’ve collected over the years.
Some old, some more recent, but ALL for FREE.
Click Here to Read the Next Post
Enjoy, upvote, resteem and follow me @theblindsquirl if you found this valuable.