Brigantine Media

ADVERTISING GURU DAVID OGILVY had his copywriters create as many as 100 headlines for the same ad, seeking the mysterious words to increase sales. He told his staff when they had written an effective headline, they had spent 70% of their clients’ money.

Here’s why: seven out of 10 people read the headline of an ad. Only three out of 10 keep on reading.

During my 40 years in retailing, I wrote at least 15,000 headlines. Less than a handful worked every time they were used. Here are two:

“Would You Buy A $50 Yves St. Laurent Shirt On Sale for $29?”

You can substitute the original price, the name and the sale price for whatever you want to sell and it will bring in customers as long as the name is recognizable and the value is great.

We’ve successfully adopted and adapted this headline for clothing, stationery shops, supermarkets and a dozen other businesses. It works every time.

“The name is Mañana. But at $25 you’d better buy it today.”

The product was a woman’s jacket made in Mexico. We sold the entire stock of 48 pieces the same day the ad ran. We reordered and ran the exact same ad ten days later. And sold out again in 48 hours. We reordered again and sold out again.

If a headline works, repeat it. There are those who never saw it the first time. There are those who saw it and are reminded. There are those who will tell others.

Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.

As a rule, I don’t tend to make a lot of friends on airplanes. People will tell you that ordinarily I’m very friendly on the ground, but in the air my goals are simple: sleep, work and read. It takes a lot for me to talk to my seat mates and recently I got a great lesson for doing just that.

It happened when the woman next to me on a packed plane just caused me too many questions for me to avoid contact. What she looked like wasn’t the cause. It was a combination of things.

First, she was reading a magazine article with a headline I must admit commanded my attention: “50 Great Things To Do With Your Breasts.” To be clear about this, the magazine was Cosmopolitan so you know it wasn’t about poultry. (By the way, I came up with feed small babies and distract grown men. What are the other 48 ideas?)

Second it was impossible to miss her new manicure in a rather strange shade of blue, a color that I thought only appeared on fingernails if you were out of oxygen.

But what really caught my attention was the book she had on her tray: The Prince by Machiavelli. Seriously, I have never seen anyone read that book without a political science class around him or her. So I had to ask why.

It turned out she was reading the book because of an argument with a co-worker over one of the “discourses” that make up the balance of the book that follow the famous essay on leadership. My seat mate, it turned out, was a chemist working on genetic splicing equipment who was flying cross-country to meet an important client. (The blue fingernails were the idea of a friend’s teen-aged daughter.)

Right there I got a powerful lesson on the complexity of consumer behavior. Think about it, when I described the woman with the Cosmo article and blue fingernails you probably had a mental picture forming. When I talked about The Prince and genetic splicing, the picture changed. Yet it was the same person.

And that’s the challenge with today’s shoppers who become so many different people in the course of one day, one shopping trip or one flight. There is no reason you can’t read Cosmo and The Prince, in fact, Machiavelli might have applauded the mix.

Today shoppers are more complex than ever. They draw a value equation out of a mix of needs and do it somewhat differently product by product. The trick for good merchants or product manufacturers is to create a narrative of value that works clearly with a sufficient number of moods.

It also made me think of the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council study called Eating In that I will help present at this year’s Food Marketing Institute (FMI) show in Las Vegas. (Full disclosure: as previously noted here, I am the new research director of the council.) One part of the study details the different need states that make up mealtime decisions and tries to help us understand how the same person rushing for fast food one night becomes a gourmet cook another night. It doesn’t make sense, but it happens. And our ability to service both moods positions us better than ever to win additional sales, which is a winning strategy in any time period.

Machiavelli would likely agree. So would Cosmo.

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Michael Sansolo is the co-author, with “Content Guy” Kevin Coupe, of the new book, “The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies,” available by clicking here .

Michael Sansolo can be reached via email at msansolo@morningnewsbeat.com .

ELMER WHEELER WAS CHOSEN as “America’s Number One Public Speaker” by a poll of 500 business clubs. He spoke to more than one million people in his lifetime. He had a unique ability to come up with just the right wording or phrase to sell merchandise.

• He went to see King Gillette, owner of Gillette blades and said, “I have six words on this folded piece of paper. If you decide to use them, you pay my fee. If you don’t, I leave.” Gillette took the paper, unfolded it, read the words and wrote out a check. Here are the six words: “How are you fixed for blades?”

• He was asked by representatives from America’s drug stores on how to increase sales at their food counters. He gave them the phrase that immediately put more money in the register. When a customer asked for a malted milk shake, the clerk asked, “One egg or two?”

• He was contacted by the salmon industry in the Northwest. Customers were used to opening a can of salmon and seeing the pink color. For some indescribable reason, a new salmon catch, when processed, was the color white. Fearing the customer would not accept the product, the industry turned to Wheeler for help. He solved their anxiety and kept sales at a record pace by adding these words to the outside of the can: “This salmon guaranteed not to turn pink.”

• The Petroleum Institute asked him to come up with a phrase to have people buy more gas. Wheeler gave them three words that increased sales across the country. When someone pulled up to a station for gas, the attendants were instructed to simply ask this question: “Fill ’er up?”

Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.

The word “you” is the one of the most important words in selling.

“You” keeps you reading. An excellent example is the Newsweek subscription letter written by copywriter Ed McLean and used for nearly 15 years. The response consistently returned a higher rate of subscriptions than all the other letters Newsweek tried. More than 100 million copies of this letter were mailed!

The letter began, “If the list upon which I found your name is any indication, this is not the first — nor will it be the last — subscription letter you receive. Quite frankly, your education and income set you apart from the general population and make you a highly rated prospect for everything from magazines to mutual funds…”

The word “you” is used 26 times on just the first page!

Max Hart of the clothing firm, Hart Schaffner & Marx, disliked long copy in ads. He kept telling his ad agency to cut words out of their copy.

One time a copywriter approached Hart with an ad describing in detail the quality of wool used in the firm’s clothing.

Again, Hart said that there were too many words.

Frustrated, the copywriter said, “Mr Hart, if I show you a headline that would make you want to read every word in the ad, no matter how many words I used, will you run this ad as is?”

Hart agreed. The copywriter soon came back with a new headline. Hart read it and said, “Run the ad!”

The headline: “This Ad is All About Max Hart.”

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Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.

The man who invented the vacuum cleaner went bankrupt.

He sold the patents to a Mr. Hoover who brought this new-fangled “electric broom” to department store buyers. They turned it down. Their reason: There was no need for this contraption. People bought inexpensive brooms to clean floors and rugs. Who would want to spend more money for an electrical gadget that did the same job?

Hoover hired a sales force that went door to door. They walked into living rooms all over America spilling dirt on rugs and then whisking them clean with this new “vacuum cleaner.”

Soon, every home had to have one.

Soon, department stores quickly stocked them because the customer wanted this new cleaner.

What happened? A “want” was created by a clever marketing person.

He found out what the customer wanted… and gave it to them.

Salesmen who say they are selling merchandise to fill their customers “needs” are living in the wrong century. We have not been a “needy” country for many years. Today’s successful salesperson are not need-fillers. They are want-creators.

As little children we are asked by adults, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” No one asks, “What do you need to be?” The reason is simple. If you “want” something strong enough you will produce it, work for it or buy it.

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Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.