Your Ads Are Your Salesmen, So Hold Them Responsible

Plus: A new hit breaks into the Top 10, and a useful fact about testimonials

I’m trying out a new format this week. Let me know what you think in the comments!

---

Old Gold🪙

In the world of direct response, we’ve traditionally used the phrase above to describe successful TV product ideas from the past that might be ready for a comeback. However, the ‘old’ has other kinds of ‘gold’ to offer — particularly in the form of wisdom from the Masters of Marketing. I usually like to develop this wisdom into featured articles, but going forward I plan to share it in shorter posts under this heading.

Since my favorite ‘Old Master’ is Claude Hopkins, I’ll kick things off with him again. In his 1927 book My Life In Advertising, Hopkins explained advertising in such a wise way that it is still pure gold nearly 100 years later. He wrote:

I have little respect for most theories of advertising, because they have not been proved. They are based on limited experiences, on exceptional conditions … The reasons for success have little do with advertising … Any conclusions drawn from such experiences are bound to lead others astray. The cases where they apply are rare …

To apply scientific advertising one must recognize that ads are salesmen. One must compare them, one by one, on a salesman’s basis, and hold them responsible for cost and result.

To advertise blindly teaches one nothing, and it usually leads to the rocks.

How many advertisers are still making the mistakes Hopkins identified in 1927? How few have internalized the fundamental truth, first articulated by John E. Kennedy in the early 1900s, that “ads are salesmen”?

Both Hopkins and Kennedy worked for Albert Lasker, and they used this fundamental truth to turn Lasker’s agency, Lord & Thomas, into the most successful of its day. They also helped make Lasker into the Mark Cuban of his day. That is, not only did he become fabulously wealthy but, like Cuban, he became the owner of a professional sports team: the Chicago Cubs.

---

Chart Watch👁️

It has been a while since anything new made it into the DRMetrix Top 10 . This month, it happened.

Socket Fan

Pitch: “2-in-1 ceiling fan and light literally takes 10 seconds to install”
Offer: $49.95 for one, 2nd one for 50% off
Brand: Bell+Howell
Starring: Joe Fowler
Marketer: Emson (🏆2023 True Top Marketer)
Producer: Opfer

This product took a while to become the hit it is today. An early design called BreezeLite was originally tested all the way back in 2017 by a company that is now defunct. It did not roll out. Six years later came this design and the first version of the commercial, which did not feature Joe Fowler and did not seem to be going anywhere. A year later, however, this campaign is now #3 in the country, and Emson is already testing a new design and commercial.

---

The links above will only work if you have access to The Library of DRTV, my online archive of DRTV projects going back to 2007. Want in? Simply upgrade to paid using the button below. It’s just $5.99 per month or $59 for the year (an 18% savings).

---

The key to this particular success might just be the offer. The 2017 product was $29.95, all but ensuring the project would ultimately fail. This is a classic Catch-22 that has bedeviled many DR marketers. At a low price, the commercial works but the product doesn’t. High returns and bad reviews follow. At a higher price, though, the product works but the campaign doesn’t.

In 2023, Emson took a chance and started from the latter direction, testing a $79.95 price point. As indicated above, their offer is now $30 less than that ($49.95) and the campaign is at the top of the charts. At least in this case, it seems that working from high to low was a way to escape the Catch-22 and find the winning strategy. (In defense of marketers from 2017, I should mention that prices above $30 were viewed as having lows odds of success.)

As for the pitch, the core promise has always been a good one. Fowler captures it nicely around 30 seconds in: “If you can screw in a lightbulb, you can hang the Socket Fan light.” Speaking of Old Gold, that phrasing is a real golden oldie. The tried-and-true formula: ‘If you can [do this simple, everyday thing], then you can use/install [our product]!’

Another thing I like about this particular commercial is how much time it spends on ‘slice of life’ demonstrations. I would have also guessed that consumers have limited ideas about where a ceiling fan might be useful, so giving them plenty of options they may not have considered is really smart.

Finally, I like that this commercial capitalizes on the fact that the product really can be installed in 10 seconds by doing the installation in real time. Those demonstrations even end with the satisfaction of seeing the product light up. I’m sure that was a simple matter of making sure to switch the product to ‘on’ before calling “action!” Yet it’s these little things that can make a big difference in a visual medium.

---

Fun Fact 🧠

This is a new feature that will replace “news(letters) you can use.” I will offer some useful piece of information that I have come across in my various reading. For example:

Testimonials are more persuasive when they admit to a past mistake.

This one comes from the latest edition of the Ariyh newsletter, which reports on a series of four experiments that found “when a product review or endorsement admits a previous mistake reviewing a similar product … it makes their current review more persuasive.” Specifically:

When people read a product review by a reviewer who admitted a mistake (vs didn’t):

• A pair of headphones was chosen 34% more often

• A speaker was chosen 12% more often

• A florist was chosen 47.3% more often

In explaining why this works, author Thomas McKinlay writes that since “we assume people try to learn from their mistakes,” we also tend to think “reviewers who previously made a mistake have more expertise with that type of product.”

You can read more about the research here. To get Ariyh in your inbox, click here.

---