Comments on: How Apple is brilliantly using a 100-year-old persuasion strategy

By: Beth the Granite Countertop Specialist

Beth the Granite Countertop Specialist — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:15:26 +0000

Great Article. This really explains the strategy well!

By: Chris Warren

Chris Warren — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:01:37 +0000

Great post…you make it sound so easy.

By: Nikolaj Bomann Mertz

Nikolaj Bomann Mertz — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:12:15 +0000

Nice post! very useful.

By: Conversion Rate Experts

Conversion Rate Experts — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:44:10 +0000

Hi Sanjay. You’re right, no advertising technique can sell a product that no one wants. But techniques such as this can help to grow an already successful business, as we’re seeing every day with our clients. The simple re-wording of a page can create an immediate increase in sales—and scientific split tests allow us to demonstrate that the improvements weren’t due to extraneous factors.

You suggested that it’s a mistake to attribute Schlitz’s jump in sales to this ad campaign alone.
Of course, it’s impossible to know all of the factors that might have influenced Schlitz’s sales that year, but Claude Hopkins was a pioneer of trackable advertising—which he outlined in his book Scientific Advertising—so he’s as reliable a source as any.

So why is Schlitz not number one today? This comes down to the “many factors” you mentioned. With time, what was once a winning edge can become an industry standard. Companies need to keep developing and innovating. Fortunately, readers of this blog have an advantage, because they are among the few that track the results of their actions, so they only keep what works, and discard tests that don’t.

By: Sanjay Gandhi

Sanjay Gandhi — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:52:58 +0000

This is a great post. It make sense that people like to see the painstaking effort you have done to make your products. But there are problems with causality here.

1. Every advertiser who does this is not successful. Something else is going on. I make towers of peanuts as a hobby (an example only, pardon me!) and I can keep describing how much effort I spend and still people wont buy it. Artists in general are all of this category-they will often show you with their own lives how much effort they put into producing whatever they produce, but most of them die poor anyway. Something else is going on-more than slick marketing and telling stories and features and benefits of your products and the painstaking process.

2. The Schliz Beer guys often stop there-where is this beer now??? That these things are TEMPORAL, shows again that it is a mistake to attribute Schlitz’s jump in sales to this ad campaign alone (it may be a factor, but how much?). If it was so good why is it not No. 1 beer today???

Marketing people are liable to fall in love with their own stories..but the economic world of buyers and sellers is not as simple as that.

Sanjay

By: Simon Peter Alciere

Simon Peter Alciere — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:36:56 +0000

I wish more advertisers would show how their product is made. Seriously, are those workers in Bangladesh paid enough to support their families? Is the toxic waste disposed of properly? Will I get sick from the factory raised beef?

I might buy your product, but I won’t become a raging fan while I still have these dark suspicions in the back of my mind.

By: Arvind

Arvind — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:14:20 +0000

Excellent post… found it very interesting… very handy approach too. Kudos to you for the post.

By: Pick a bowling ball

Pick a bowling ball — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:45:32 +0000

That’s very interesting. Apparently it’s working for them since they’ve been so successful lately.

By: Christian, Baymard

Christian, Baymard — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:39:58 +0000

They also use this strategy quite often in the food industry; showing you where the food comes from, how it was grown, taken care of, only the best selected etc.

By: Howie Jacobson

Howie Jacobson — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:53:12 +0000

So the next time you’re depressed and down on yourself, remember all the work your mother put in just to get you born :) I love the part when I went from 8 to 16 cells the best, personally.

Seriously, each of us has the potential for unique contribution, fueled by expertise and passion and consistent effort. When we can articulate, not how great we are, but how much we care about what we’re doing and how much we care about doing it well, that’s just contagious.

Well discussed ad (thanks for finding and reprinting) and video.