Ernest Weckesser Ad: How To Make Your Computer As Easy To Use As Your Telephone

I’m glad I stumbled upon a recent post (recent in 2008 :-)) on the Copywriter’s Board in which someone correctly pointed out that I’d gotten Bud Weckesser’s C.V. wrong in an earlier post on my blog.

That’s because later in the thread, Mike Winicki reminded me about (and made some incisive commentary on) a super successful space ad by Green Tree Press around the year 2000.

I knew this ad for “The Green Tree Computer Course” had a very high number of insertions but Mike Winiki pinned the number of sales at 1.5 million for this $12.95 mail order book.

It would be a dilution to try to paraphrase what he wrote next:

We should be paying more attention to what someone like Green Tree did using 1 step advertising to a cold list, selling tens of millions of dollars worth of books as opposed to someone’s Internet sales letter that brought in a million bucks– and of course that was all done through JV’s, so who knows if the sales letter was really good or not.

To me there is no comparison in the skill level needed to succeed with one as opposed to succeeding the other way.

Michael S. Winicki
Author of “Killer Techniques to Succeed with Newspaper, Magazine and Yellow Page Advertising” http://www.bignoisemarketing.com/mikesbook.html

“How To Make Your Computer As Easy To Use As Your Telephone”