Earlier this week, I was talking to a potential customer and the story of Dave Lester came to mind. Just after I'd started my own guerrilla warfare ad agency in Silicon Valley, this guy came to me and wanted to run an ad in one of the trade magazines for printers. I spent the last two days looking through my ad archives, because I "thought" I'd kept a copy of every ad I'd ever written. Alas, Dave old buddy, I don't have yours.
Even then, I asked him why anyone would call him. His answer: "I know everything about anything involved with printers." Good answer. That was my ad theme.
Dave called me a month after the ad ran, and said he'd sold a quarter-million dollars worth of printers to Hertz Car Rental. And he told me the story.
Hertz called him and said they wanted to get to printers for their rental kiosks, but nobody could give them a product that would eject extra paper so they could tear off the rental contract from the top slot of their kiosk. Dave, who really did know everything about printers, told them he could modify the EPROM in the printer to eject the form just where they wanted it. Which he subsequently did.
Lessons learned here?
1. Save all your stuff. ALL your stuff. Especially the early ads.
2. Give people a compelling reason to call you.
3. Hey Dave Lester, wherever you are. Did you keep a copy of the ad. If so, DM me and let's catch up. I'ld like to post a follow-on account of that adventure.
Sincerely yours,
Rick Bennett
Ad Hit Man
No comments:
Post a Comment
Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?