Tag: Duane Jones
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Parallel failure
The jokes in previous item reminded me of another modern problem that Duane Jones, writing around 1951, would understand. Jones’s primary rule for advertisers and marketers: REPEATS WHEN SAMPLED. First get the customer to SAMPLE the product, for free or for a nominal price. If the product satisfies a need or desire, the customer will…
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What do they really owe?
Compact mag says colleges owe students transparency about the actions and investments of their endowments. Maybe, but that’s not the FIRST thing colleges owe students. For 70 years all media and culture and corporations have been falsely advertising college as necessary for life and work. Purely false, and most parents and youngsters have figured it…
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Old advice for “journalists”
In reading about McBee-type card systems, ran across Calvin Mooers. He was one of the more interesting characters of early computing. I’ll feature his Zatocard system later, but first want to write up his best-known observation: An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a…
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WPA salesmen?
I’ve been focusing on WPA and related work since 2008. This year, for no particular reason, I’ve been focusing on sales and advertising after completely ignoring the subject for 72 years. Got curious about the connection. WPA definitely employed white-collar workers who had been discarded along with the skilled laborers when Wall Street bombed America…
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Universal NIP
Burge continues to delve into the details of NIPs. He shows plenty of survey data to prove that NIPs aren’t just uninterested in religion; we’re uninterested in EVERY SINGLE institution, from politics to corporations to journalism to entertainment. I commented with some sales-training wisdom: It might help if the churches or newspapers would ASK why…
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No product, no sampling
Carrying on with CH Smith’s point that AI is winning because there are no better human products to compare with. Certainly true of “journalism”. The professionals, whether still working in MSM or working elsewhere as fake “independents”, have the same arrogance toward their audience. They know what’s best, and they’re PROUD that their product is…
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Harlow misses the Product
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2014 REPRINT: Since I’m thinking about ad jingles….. One local business has produced an absolutely brilliant jingle. Most radio jingles have a brief version, a full version and a concerto version. The brief version is 5 or 10 seconds long, just the first…
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Brilliant technique
This Ford dealer training film is a BRILLIANT application of a classic training technique. It’s a “play inside a play”, with the actors trying to read an organized script while all sorts of crap goes wrong. An actor is missing, forcing the director to skip a scene. Union workmen bust in and start setting up…
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What is a politician?
A politician is a salesman for broadcast media. TV started in 1948 as a way for people to watch live sports events. Radio was inadequate for the purpose. For a few decades TV provided a broader range of entertainment. Now it’s back to nothing but sports. There are four major-league sports on TV. Football, baseball,…
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Clarifier
The three-way division of sales targets into Conservative Prospects, Step-up Prospects and Luxury Prospects seems to have been common currency among all the dealers. For my purposes the division serves as an illuminator. It’s not a unique division by any means; the ancient and Orwellian caste divisions are exactly parallel. Auto Ancient Orwell Conservative Prospect…
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At least they understood
These old sales training films sometimes (but not always) treated the Conservative Prospect as undesirable and the Step-up Prospect and Luxury Prospect as desirable. Ford tended to hold the Conservative Prospect in slightly higher esteem. But they all recognized that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. The companies made DIFFERENT MODELS to qualify the DIFFERENT PROSPECTS. Ford’s three…
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How to depersuade
Persuading by shaming seems to be a trend lately, at least in the spam from campaigns and the writing by advocates. The Trump campaign spam constantly says things like “I never expected this from YOU, Friend!” Advocates at Compact Mag write articles telling the reader he’s an idiot. This isn’t how you gather followers or…
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Meta-trust
I noticed somebody citing a poll on trusted institutions by the Edelman outfit. Looked and quickly realized the “poll” was a pusher. It was telling businesses that they need to be strictly DNC if they want to be trusted. More “climate”, more “diversity”, more “virus”, more “science”. This obviously won’t work. Taking a side is…
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Depends on what you offer
There’s a lot of bitching lately about ‘audience capture’, meaning that the newspaper or broadcaster is forced to keep pleasing only Democrats or only Repooflicans. The bitchers are blaming the audience, ordering us to pay for stuff we don’t want in order to prevent the broadcasters from being ‘captured’. Wrong. Capture is permanent, inevitable and…
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We manage somehow
It’s a peculiar situation. Polls consistently show that 2/3 of the population is perfectly tired of the political and corporate teams and all the crimes committed by the political and corporate teams. Yet no writers or politicians or corporations or advertisers or churches or entertainers are trying to pick up this audience. All the output…
