ANSWERS from a best selling author.

[GordonJ]

Originally Posted by Fishman

Gordon,

Not sure about anyone else, but I would love to see "Bud's" ads. As well as his notes. I think that would be extremely educational and fun.


Thanks for the great interview.

Fishman

Fishman,

The problem is TIME and VOLUME. There are hundreds of ads, with, perhaps, thousands of variables, thousands of TESTS. Dr. Weckesser was a prolific writer.

He was known to dash out several headlines quickly and then perfected them with testing.

My thinking it is this: it probably would be best to focus on the ads that sold the most products, the control ads, the tests which improved the response...otherwise, what good would it be to have hundreds of ads if we didn't know what they did...right?

I'll be back up in Erie next week and I'll begin to put together the ads in perhaps a chronological sequence and also in a "how they did" manner, starting with the very best sellng ads and going from there.

For me, it is truly LOST treasure. I've found an old Harvey Brody ad that was offering the lists of Joe Karbo and Gene Schwartz for rental. Harvey had one of the very first computer managed list services and his clients were a who's who of direct response marketing.

Just one note. As excited as I am about finding great history (because I believe I can learn from it)...Pete is excited about the TOMORROW of GTP, with his two new divisions coming "online" soon. GTP is very much a NOW company and a TOMORROW company...

I'm the guy who's getting the thrill from this buried treasure....and the insights into Dr. Weckesser's THINKING, well, that's just going to help ME become a better persuader too. I believe it important to learn from success, and for 35 years and counting, Green Tree Press has been and will continue to be successful.

If you have any suggestions on how to ORGANIZE this gold, I'm all ears, OK?

Gordon Jay Alexander