Tag: Duane Jones
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Inverting Duane Jones
One basic rule of salesmanship has been inverted. When you’re currently dealing with a company or buying their products, they don’t send you any offers and don’t seem to want your business. When you haven’t bought anything for many years, or never bought anything at all, you’ll keep getting offers for updates and new products.…
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Duane’s laws
Duane Jones, the father of radio advertising, would appreciate this 1936 RCA booklet. Dealers mailed it out to local farmers. It’s a proper almanac with sunrises, moon phases, zodiac, etc. The pages are interspersed with ads for RCA farm radios. Major radio companies had special low-voltage models for farms, often designed to run off the…
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The sizzle matters
Social animals respond to symbolic actions, including attention and reputation. Duane Jones, the old master of advertising, slammed this point repeatedly. You need a good product FIRST. If you want to succeed, you also need the right kind of attention and reputation. An adman can’t help a bad product. Two current lawsuits deal with this…
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Marketing missed
Random and pointless thought about advertising. When Max Hoffmann started importing VWs in 1949 he tried to emphasize the cool factor. Before the war he had been a luxury car dealer in Austria, so he was accustomed to moving in cool circles. The appeal didn’t work until the 60s, then it hit hard, starting in…
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Duane Jones would be happy
I bought another Hudson book through Abebooks. This one came from Browse Awhile Books in Tipp City near Dayton. They included a wonderful little pack of premiums along with the book. A library-style checkout card in its envelope, and the code for discounts stamped with a library-style rubber stamp. A bookmark with the picture of…
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Tab-ulation
This item was spawned by thinking about Tabs, Tabulations and Tables. I’m leading toward a specific point, but first need to spit out some Graphic Juice that I’ve been holding during this long unimaginative ADA work. = = = = = For several months I’ve been making and testing courseware blind-style, using only the keyboard.…
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Show, don’t tell.
If you want to sell a product or a religion you have to SHOW the product, not just tell us to buy it. Churches quote the New Testament and then viciously reject lonely and poor people. In 2020 the Democrats talked “resistance” and then lethally assisted Trump’s torture chamber, continuing it for two years after…
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Swindlers vs salesmen
First input, unquestionably true: Social media is THE OPPOSITE OF AN ECHO CHAMBER. Algorithms are designed with GREAT PRECISION to give you what you hate, not what you want. After you’ve seen an item, sometimes you think about it and want to go back and look again. YOU CAN’T GET THERE. The algorithm knows that…
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Was she the first to say it?
I’m rereading Pat Foster’s book on the Nash Metropolitan, written in 1996. The book prominently features an interview with Evelyn Ay, Miss America in 1954. She was the official ambassador for the Ambassador and the official revealer of the Metropolitan. From my previous item on the subject: Transcribing the corporate part: The relationship with Nash…
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Carver cures journalism
The local “newspaper” lost me a long time ago. When I moved here in 1990 I was accustomed to competent city governments, generally friendly people, and newspapers worth reading. I found the opposite of all three. The newspaper devoted tremendous energy to insulting the people, telling us that we were shit. This year the Cowles…
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Not convinced it’s better
After one week with this new Win 11 computer, I’ve managed to work around SOME of the stupid shit, but it’s still a worse machine in every way than the old Win 7 computer. Every program starts slower, runs slower, and places more obstacles in my path. Linux is not the answer. My most important…
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Start with quality.
Last week I wrote up a contest between the first coast-to-coast airmail flight and a group of Essex cars. The cars won. Hudson touted the event in a 1922 pamphlet which omits the airmail comparison entirely. By this account the project was originated by the Post Office in an attempt to widen the range of…
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More non-news from “news”
I keep watching to see if any of the powerful institutions have figured out what’s wrong. So far I’m not seeing any understanding here in US. Mexico and Canada have OFFICIALLY figured it out and started doing the right thing, which is the FDR thing. Will we ever get there? I suppose it’s possible. Until…
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Spoiled brats
“Journalists” are worried about Google’s new chatbot. = = = = = START BRAT: The consequences for the internet as we know it will be profound. For news publishers, they have already been profound. Industry executives are quietly sounding the alarm about “Google Zero,” a term popularized by The Verge’s Nilay Patel to describe the…
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Another first/second thought
Since I’m doing first thought/second thought today… Somebody posted that the internet makes fraud easier. First thought: On average it’s not easier. A proper swindle starts with cultivation and ends with disappearance. The net makes disappearing super easy, but makes cultivating a lot harder. Persuasion, for an honest or dishonest purpose, works best face to…
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