Ad Man Classics

“Come on over, folks.  I’m going to show you the most amazing slicing machine you have ever seen in your life”

So what does a street pitchman have to do with Claude Hopkins?  I’ll get to that in minute.

I am now through Chapter 3 of Claude Hopkins classic tome “My Life in Advertising”.

Yesterday, I posted what i called my “my index card summary”.  I try to pack onto a 3 x 5 index card the key concepts and thoughts i just read.  By limiting it to only one side of an index card it forces me to distill down.

On it i wrote: “Work hard. Fail FAST. Fail SMALL.  We’re all going to fail, so get it out of the way so we can move on to BIG WINNERS faster”

Today, i wrote just one word.

DEMONSTRATE.  Thats it.

Of course, he also talked about. testing. use of samples. coupons. and knowing peoples feelings and preconceptions to a product, which are lessons for another time.

But, the power of one dramatic demonstration by the use of samples/coupons…“will teach any man in one day that selling without samples is many times as hard.”

“I sold one woman in ten by merely talking the polish at the door.  But when I could get into the pantry and demonstrate the polish I sold nearly all”

Now here is why selling a slicing machine could improve your marketing.

Claude would stand for hours listening to the street fakers and taking in their methods and theories.

“They never tried to sell things without demonstration.  They showed in some dramatic way what the product they sold would do.  It is amazing how many advertisers know less than those men about salesmanship”

So if Claude based his selling in print on the power of a dramatic demonstration.  What could it do for you today?

I’ll leave you today with this nugget.  I dug this up off an old index card i had filed away after reading an article about Ron Popeil. (I think it was a new yorker article written by Malcolm Gladwell early in his career, called “The Pitchmen”)

I call it the Ron Popeil pitch method. Here it is:

• Make the product the star.
• explain the invention to customers not once, or twice but THREE or FOUR times with a DIFFERENT twist each time.
• You show exactly HOW it works and WHY it works and make them follow your hands.
• Tell them PRECISELY how it fits into their routine and its not at all hard to use.

Now thats a demonstration.