My last two MAA columns have stressed the effectiveness of well written, informative and intelligent copy that encourages readers to seek further information which can then hopefully lead to impressive sales. To illustrate this I used two campaigns that I was responsible for back in my mad man days in New York. Hasselblad cameras and the Irish Tourist Board. As I pointed out, this was long before the Internet, or even 800 phone numbers, So response relied on people writing in.
Both campaigns ran for several years, and both continued to rack up impressive numbers. Which I offer as support for two of my favourite quotes… “People read what interests them. Sometimes, it’s an ad.” Howard Gossage. And… “The consumer isn’t stupid. She’s your wife.” David Ogilvy.
To further illustrate this, I will again modestly blow my own horn and talk about the Dell Computer campaign I worked on whilst permalancing at Chiat San Francisco which transmogrified (Check out the posh word I occasionally like to tease you with!) into Goldberg, Moser, O’Neil and celebrated by hoisting a flag on the roof showing Jay’s face with a big red clown nose and the line “No more bozos.” They also took the opportunity to chuck Jay’s weird modern art collection into Maiden Lane. Moving on… Michael Dell was 19 and a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin when he founded PC’s Limited in 1984 with about $1,000. He bought IBM-compatible computers and components, upgraded them, and sold them directly to customers. He soon left university to concentrate on the company.
The lynch pin of his marketing structure was disintermediation. (Yeah, another posh word, but totally apt, as it simply means cutting out the middleman.) If you where driven by the ads and wanted a Dell, you couldn’t go to a store and buy one, you had to call the 800 number in the ad and ask for one over the phone. Meaning that all sales where solely driven by the advertising. If the ads didn’t work, the phones wouldn’t ring and Dell wouldn’t sell any computers. Fortunately, for GMO, and me, the phones never stopped ringing and within a few years Dell became the number one computer, outselling HP and Compaq. Time for a modest toot from me!
