The Critical Advertising Ingredient: The RIGHT Appeal

Imagine two companies selling the same widget.

Company A has seasoned copywriters who can write the paint off the walls, plus unmatched graphic design talent.

Company B has a lone copy cub and a kid still learning what a proper layout looks like.

Based on this brief tale-of-the-tape, most would expect Company B’s promotion to be KO’d by the creative pros of A Company.

But Company B dug far deeper into the market and discovered the “right appeal.”

What’s the right appeal?

It’s the key motivation that causes someone to desire your product more than the money they exchange for it.

And if you take the time to nail the right appeal, you don’t need A-List creative to make a mint selling your product.

One of my favorite ads, showcasing the power of the right appeal, was written in the gloomy days of food rationing during World War II and ran straight through the start of the baby boom.  The ad struck at the white hot appeal of the hope offered by country living at a time when city dwellers were looking for ways toward security and abundance to raise their families.

The ad copy was written over the course of a summer by mail order team, Lyman Wood and Wally Boren and the drawing, which visualized the dream of country living, was sketched in a lunch hour by a young J. Walter Thompson art director, Johnny Cook.

Everything from art work to the naming of the product to the word pictures conjured up in the body copy targeted the fear and uncertainty most of the population was feeling during war time. People were searching for an alternative and the “Have More Plan” offered it in spades.

You can click on the thumbnail above to download a PDF of the ad.

This is the way I want to live —  the rest of my life!”

Mrs. Robinson, Jackie and I just want to tell you how we’ve learned to have more happiness, more living and more security than 99% of this world’s families have ever had!

I guess this sounds boastful, but I don’t mean it so. It is just the enthusiasm we have for the Plan we’ve worked out. We call it our “Have-More” Plan because that’s how it works for us…we’re having more of just about everything that makes life worth living!

Our “Have-More” Plan is the true story of how we Robinsons moved from the city four years ago to our 2-acre place in the nearby country to find a “little land and a lot more living” while I kept a full-time job in town.

It tells how we grow most of our family’s food in spare time — have fun doing it — have better living — more sunshine and fresh air– more peace and quiet — more security and independence — more of just about everything!

All the Details

Our “Have More” Plan contains over 50,000 words, 73 illustrations, many actual photographs of our own place. And I’ve kept the price as low as I possibly could, only $1.00 postpaid.

It tells just how we do everything — all our short-cuts, ideas, labor saving methods — how it takes us only an hour or so of spare time a day to have tender chicken to eat, plenty of really fresh eggs, a wonderful garden with a lot less work, delicious rabbit meat, rich milk, butter, cream from our miniature dairy, tasty ham, pork, bacon, sausage, geese, turkeys, squab, spring lamb, honeybees, fruit trees instead of shade trees, luscious grapes, raspberries, strawberries, etc. — how we use the latest, easiest preserving methods, including quick freezing.

Are You Planning a Hew Home?

If you are planning to build, remodel or buy a home. I can’t urge you too strongly to send for a copy of our Plan — it can save you hundreds of dollars, many costly mistakes! Our Plan shows you that the ordinary “house and lot” is as out of date as the horse and buggy. Shows you just how to go about finding a place like ours with an acre or so of land, how to choose the right location, how to save money in spite of today’s high building costs, how to get started now, how to lay your place out, how your house should be specially planned, how to finance your place on a small amount of cash! Dozens of other things you’ll be thankful to know about.

No “Magic” About It

Now please don’t get me wrong. This is no “crack-pot theory” on how to make an easy living. I suppose that if you absolutely had to, you could live a long time entirely on a small place like our two acres. But that would be just existing, not really living.

You’ve got to have some cash income from a job or a pension or a small business of your own. What I’m saying is that with my “Have-More” Plan you can make a small cash income into the best and happiest kind of a living any family could want. That’s WHY we call it our “Have-MORE” Plan.

Will You Join Us?

A friend said the other day, “Ed, why do you bother with other people? Why don’t you settle down and just enjoy your own job and your ‘Have More’ Homestead? Why try to spread it all over the country?” I may sound silly trying to tell you why. This is my job now. I am putting full time into gathering information on country living …for ourselves and others. I feel, somehow, that right now the U.S. needs all the help it can get toward happiness and peace and security.

I’ve got a boy I want to see grow up in a good country, and if ten or twenty million American families can get set the way the Robinson family is, I don’t think anything can hurt this nation very much…not even atomic bombs!

Do you see what I mean? That’s why I’ve worked so hard putting this plan together. That’s why I was so careful to be truthful and sensible about everything we put in it. And that’s why I’ve kept the price as low as I possibly could — only $1.00 postpaid.

Now It’s Up To You!

So, if you are one of our kind of people, if you would like to have the happiness and security of a little place in the country like ours, just fill in the coupon here and send it to me. When you get your Plan — by return mail — look it over. If you are disappointed in any way, if you don’t agree it’s the biggest dollar’s worth you ever saw in your life, put it right back in the package and return it to me. I’ll send you your dollar back and a dime for your postage. On the other hand, if you like it, and I’m sure you will, help me by showing it to your friends and getting them to start planning a “Have-More” Homestead also,

Yours for “a little land and a lot of  living.”

Ed Robinson