Frank Irving Fletcher earned more as a copywriter in early 20th Century dollars than 97% of copywriters today.
In Fletcher’s autobiography, “Lucid Interval,” he says: “The aim of modern advertising is not to make people think, but to save them the trouble and effort of thinking.”
One of his best known ads, also for Tecla Pearls, is entitled “A 10,000 Mistake.” John Caples holds this ad up as a model for telling a story “in a few words” in “Tested Advertising Methods.”
Fletcher told these stories to well heeled audiences and got them to respond in droves, as in this ad for Tecla Pearls.
Copywriter and direct response scholar, Robert Stover, has put together a great page of ads by Frank Irving Fletcher.
That was simply amazing prose. I’d give an arm to be able to write like that.