(This was one of my first entries on Info Marketing Blog, waaay back on June 11 2007.
I decided to revisit it nearly 18 years later. Haylings’ mainstay in the 30s and 40s was the classified ad. )
Imagine facing the Great Depression as a 19-year-old who’s left the despair of Detroit for a new start in rural southern California.
You’re flat broke, never held a job, never been beholden to a boss and are still too young to have a family to support.
What do you do?
Here’s how George W. Haylings played this hand.
First, he consolidated.
He sold his car for $200 and lived on that $200 for two whole years. That’s two dollars a week: $1.50 for food and 50 cents for charging the battery in his radio. [Read more…] about George Haylings: Info Marketer Who Laughed at the Depression
(March 2025) I needed to pull an old rabbit out of a hat for a client recently, and THIS was the 
As Rosser Reeves noted: “A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.”
John Caples was the great story selling adman of the early 20th Century.
Recently one day, I stumbled across this remarkable print ad and asked myself the question: “How’d this ad get into my possession?”
Advertising has a lot in common with 
He went from the Downtown comedy clubs to the hallowed halls of the J. Walter Thompson ad agency.