When shrunken heads were hot...

[Dien Rice]

Hi Gordon,

I definitely have an affinity for what they call "old school"... In many ways, I feel it is better and more effective...

Even the writing was better.

There's something about sales and marketing books written, for example, in the 1940s and 1950s, compared to most books today... There's something seemingly more "readable" about them to me...

What could it be that makes it so?

Here's a passage from Elmer Wheeler's "Tested Sentences That Sell" (chapter 6)...

~~~~~

THE STORY OF BARBASOL

I was asked by the Barbasol Company, in the person of F.
B. Shields, president, to find a good “Tested Selling Approach”
to use on men shopping in drugstores and at toilet goods
counters.

Going to Sears, Roebuck & Company in Cleveland to set
up our field word laboratory, we soon discovered there were
146 statements that could be used in approaching a customer,
yet one came to the surface as best. It was:

“How would you like to save six minutes shaving?”

This is a surefire leading question, for what man could
reply, “Not interested - I love to hang around the bathroom
shaving!”

When the man asked how he could cut his shaving time, he
was told:

“Use Barbasol - just spread it on - shave it off - nothing
else required!”

Sales in this Sears store increased one hundred and two
percent, with only one negative reaction. A man with fuzz on
his face said, “My gracious, it only takes me three minutes to
shave anyway!”

This answer gave us an idea, and the single-sentence sales
“opener” was changed to, “How would you like to cut your
shaving time in half?” When this even more basic approach
was used at William Taylor’s store in Cleveland, sales
increased three hundred percent, according to reports from
Richard Roth, vice president.

And here is further proof that once a sentence or sales
appeal is basic, it will sell as high as seven out of every ten
people on which it is used properly. The same sentence was
sent to Benson, Smith & Company Honolulu, and in three days
sold fifty-one out of seventy-eight people, or the entire product
on hand!

~~~~~

I just picked this story at random - there are a ton of them... Somehow, I feel if this research was presented in a book today, it would be dry and boring and put the reader to sleep...

We've lost something we need to get back!

Okay, I went off track a little... But what is it that makes such writing more compelling than most of the writing today?

Best wishes,

Dien

P.S. Gordon, your stories have the same "compelling" quality...

Originally Posted by GordonJ

I really don't know how today's followers measure success, some think that guys like Russel Brunson/Frank Kern are the greatest marketers of all time.

OK.

So, where do guys like Ben Suarez fit into their thinking? OLD OLD school? OLD methods?

A question was asked in a very popular guru group who was the best direct response marketer of all time? Well, a spurious question at best, but what are the metrics and parameters for measurement?

So, I say this. Show me your best and compare to Ben Suarez, 50+ years of continuous success, with several BILLION dollars in sales, of thousands of different products, employing thousands of people over the years and is still CRUSHING it today. These followers of gurus love to talk about crushing it.

I think SCI and all of its parts and pieces easily make more in a month than most revered gurus of IM do in a year.

Now, I may not be a big fan of the man himself, for my own reasons...but it is hard to argue against the very VISIBLE success in direct response marketing he has made.

Who knows, maybe Russell and Frank will still be at it 30 years from now?

Hard to get excited these days about the latest guru and his many minions of followers. Good for them.

Not so good for me.

I need to hang out more in other groups, like with only one other member...oh wait, I do that here.

Gordon

[trevord92]

Old school didn't have all the bells and whistles we've got now - maybe photos or illustrations but no videos or social media interaction.

So it had to paint the entire picture.

More recently, I remember the days of multi-page ads for personal computers because they had to explain everything.

[Dien Rice]

Hi Trevor,

I remember those multi-page computer ads! They were great! (I was really into computers back then...)

Now, this is not the same thing... But you may remember some of the early home computer ads in the magazines...

I don't know why, but family and friends always seemed to gather around the computer...

Clearly, this was how they used computers back then!



Even those who couldn't see the computer screen somehow had fun...



I'm not sure why, but parents and siblings used to gather around smiling whenever anyone used the computer...



It seems strange to us, but back then, for some reason, the home computer was sometimes even included in family photos...

I got those photos from the following web page, where there are a lot more wild photos of early home computer ads!

Me & My TRS-80: Kids And Their Computers in the 1980s
https://flashbak.com/trs-80-kids-com...-1980s-394341/

Best wishes,

Dien

Originally Posted by trevord92

Old school didn't have all the bells and whistles we've got now - maybe photos or illustrations but no videos or social media interaction.

So it had to paint the entire picture.

More recently, I remember the days of multi-page ads for personal computers because they had to explain everything.

[trevord92]

Thanks Dien - interesting flashbacks.

The real fun (of course) was typing in the program listings from the magazines and hoping things saved to cassette before something crashed. That and adapting Basic for a different computer (hmm - wonder how I got started in programming!)

One weekly computer magazine here in UK had a one page cartoon advert on the back, partly created by Mel Croucher who wrote this very readable book about one of his games.

Different times indeed!

[trevord92]

And a couple more magazine ads - fairly long copy and all you had to do was clip the coupon, send your money and wait (what seemed like forever in the case of the Spectrum)

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/266627240409385745/

https://twitter.com/SWRetroComp/stat...172352/photo/1

[Dien Rice]

Hi Trevor,

You and I must be of a similar "vintage"... and we seem to have had similar experiences!

I also used to buy magazines and books, to type in the programs... So I could have games to play! (I couldn't afford to buy the games myself, at the beginning, so typing in programs from magazines was what I did!)

Yes... that's how I learned to program in BASIC too...

I was here in Australia, so we got influences from both the USA and the UK. We bought a Commodore-64 (a US computer), but I saw all the ads for the ZX Spectrum, the ZX-81, the BBC Micro, the Amstrad, etc. (Those were all British-made home computers, for those who may not know... )

Few would know this, but there was also an Australian home computer manufactured back in those days (the 1980s)... the Microbee.

(It's amazing to me that Alan Sugar - who hosts the UK version of "The Apprentice" - is the guy who was behind the Amstrad computer! I'd only known his name associated with computers... He's had an amazing business history, when I read more about it a few years ago...)

The other guy I'll mention is Clive Sinclair... (who was behind the ZX Spectrum, the ZX-80 and ZX-81 home computers, and others)... He was a great British inventor, I'd compare him to James Dyson nowadays (though of course, they were/are innovating in different areas).

This is Clive Sinclair's C5... a pre-Tesla three-wheeled electric vehicle, which came out in 1985...



He was amazingly prolific in his heyday...!

Thanks for the trip down memory lane... Those were some great days...

Best wishes,

Dien

Originally Posted by trevord92

Thanks Dien - interesting flashbacks.

The real fun (of course) was typing in the program listings from the magazines and hoping things saved to cassette before something crashed. That and adapting Basic for a different computer (hmm - wonder how I got started in programming!)

One weekly computer magazine here in UK had a one page cartoon advert on the back, partly created by Mel Croucher who wrote this very readable book about one of his games.

Different times indeed!

[trevord92]

Hi Dien

Thanks for those memories - agree we're likely similar vintage (I'm mid 60's age)

First computer - apart from using the main frame at uni - was a Video Genie (Tandy TRS80 clone) so none of the UK magazines had listings to type in directly for it, hence learning Basic.

Been on the web since Mosaic was the go-to browser (eek!) and learned HTML from trial and error plus about the only tutorial website around in the mid 90's

Long form copy works on the web, even if Google is the only thing to read the whole page.

Amstrad were in "hi fi" before the computer days - I owned one of those turntables and, of course, Alan Sugar has hosted the Apprentice in your neck of the woods as well as UK.

Clive Sinclair's company made calculators before computers (and radios before them) and eventually his electric trike. I remember our maths teacher being upset because one of our class had just bought a scientific calculator for a quarter the price the teacher had paid for his 4 function calculator (add, subtract, multiply, divide).

Fun times!