3 Old Ads with Ideas You Should Borrow/Steal Today

Plus Dunkin' is the new Bulova

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going? Good week? Enjoying the summer here in NYC?

Welcome to all the new subscribers who joined from CMO Coffee Talk — thank you for inviting me to present to the group - I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.

If you’d like me to come speak with people you work with, I do that! I just did that last week! My email is jared@sagelett.com. Or you can respond to this newsletter. I mean, I’m pretty sure you can figure out how to track me down, right?

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Everything Old Is New Again, Then Old, Then New Again, Then Old Again, Then New Again

There’s a saying about business attributed to Netscape co-founder Jim Barksdale:

“There’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.”

I love the quote because if you repeat it you sound smart.

In fact, I have a little tip for you. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.

Here goes:

If you’re ever on a panel at a conference, and the moderator asks you a question, and at that moment you happen to be zoned out, and you have a moment of panic and think to yourself, “Oh crap, what the hell did she just ask me about the future of AI startups?” and you’re about to ask her to repeat the question - Stop. Don’t ask her to repeat the question. Because you have the answer.

The answer is, “There’s only two ways I know of to make money in business: bundling and unbundling.”

And that should shut that fancypants moderator right the hell up.

But it might not. She may have a follow up, “That’s interesting, tell me more about that.” And you should respond, “Well, I wish I could take credit for that, but I heard it from Jim Barksdale, the co-founder of Netscape.”

Which implies - JUST implies - that you heard it from him whilst in his actual, physical presence, which should be enough to cut the moderator off, because really - asking you three questions in a row on a conference panel is rude to the other panelists.

But this isn’t about how to kick ass on a conference panel.

I was bringing up the quote to say that I have a similar saying (after I heard Jim Barksdale, the co-founder of Netscape, say that other thing) about marketing:

There’s two ways that I know of to do marketing: either do something that’s already been done, or do something new.

Yeah, maybe that sounds stupid.

Except it’s not! I promise!

I’m going to guess that at some point you were working somewhere in a nice cushy marketing job, and maybe things aren’t going the way you want. It was time for a change.

But what change? If you work for a big company, you call up McKinsey, and you write them a check for $800,000, and they will say one of two things to you:

1. Here’s something new you should try! Except they famously told Purdue Pharmaceutical to try something new to “turbocharge opioid sales” and look where that got them.
   
   OR

2. Go back and do what worked before! You got off track, now go back and get on track! That first track was correct! Or pay us another $500,000 and we’ll “benchmark” what other companies have already done, and you can go get on their track!

As my kids say, “me personally” I like to do what’s already been done. Like, go back all the way to the beginning and just do that.

To wit:

Ever wonder what was the first television commercial? I didn’t think so. But that’s not going to stop me:

For those who didn’t click on that, the commercial is just that clock over a map of the United States, and the voiceover is “America runs on Bulova time.”

Which, you (and everyone else) may note, sounds an awful lot like Dunkin’’s “America runs on Dunkin’” tagline.

And when I found that out, I thought to myself, “How un-original!”

But then I thought to myself, “there’s only two things they could’ve done, and they did one of them. Brilliant!”

That is all to say that I thought it might be fun (“fun”) to take a look at some old ads from companies introducing new technology, to see if there’s anything we can steal to help us tell our stories today.

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Maybe Don’t Tell People Their Jobs Are Boring

If we’re going to look at office technology ads from the bygone days of the 1950s and ‘60s, allow me to stipulate that they will contain outdated gender stereotypes. I think we can all agree that today, women can be bosses and men can be Secretary of Transportation.

With that out of the way…

Something I see all the time is software company websites saying something like, “stop doing that shitty loser work for losers and spend more time having fun using our HR software to process severance payments.” (Or, y’know, along those lines). It will denigrate someone’s job and say that with this new tool your job that was mostly stupid crap will now be amazingly productive.

This is a tactic I do not like. Nobody likes to be told the work they do is stupid - certainly not by you, software homepage.

This ad for IBM electric typewriters is a good example of how you can say how a productivity tool can enhance the rockstar secretary that you are, while not making you feel like your day is primarily filled with sadness.

[Before the IBM electric, much of the day was] “spent on peripheral matters that have always been a necessary but unproductive part of the typing process. Like erasing errors. Backspacing to put in an underscore. Counting characters in order to center a line…Such tasks require little talent. In fact, they are a costly and frustrating waste of talent…More of the routine work of typing is now done by the typewriter, allowing the secretary to exercise skill and judgment…”

They get a bunch of things right — the ad is targeted to the boss (the buyer), while addressing the user (the secretary) (and, unlike I often see, it’s clear who the buyer and user are and what needs they have). It’s clear about the benefits for the boss (increased productivity), and for the secretary (eliminating time-consuming tasks that get in the way of you using your real skills).

It tells you explicitly what those time-consuming tasks are (erasing errors, backspacing, etc), without resorting to generalities that we see everywhere today like “saves time and effort.” And most of all, it speaks to the skills the secretary already has and shows how she’ll be even more empowered (“allowing the secretary to exercise skill and judgment.”)

In short, everyone just wants to hear they’re brilliant and talented.

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You Can Target Multiple People in One Piece of Marketing

IBM ran an ad campaign back then titled, “Secretary and Boss Agree” where they explicitly address both the buyer (the boss) and the user (the secretary) in the same ad.

When software companies today do a messaging project, they’ll often create a document that has the buying committee, with the buyer and influencer and user etc etc etc, and then they list the benefits for each person.

But rarely do I see that used in a cohesive way where they address multiple people on the committee with multiple messages and drive home a broader message.

Sure, this one is a little goofy - the copy is, “She’s got to hand it to the boss…the IBM Electric was the best buy he made!” OK whatever.

But I really like how the two columns of copy are explicitly targeted to different personas - one part is for the user (the secretary) and one for the buyer (the boss). Putting those both in the same piece of marketing tells a fuller story than companies that are not specific about who they’re speaking to in their collateral.

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I’m Obsessed with Customer-Obsessed Brands

Y’know how you’ll go on a software website, and then on there it’ll say something like:

or

or

or

or

Hm, that’s awfully specific.

I love that every one of those (and the dozen other examples I didn’t bother putting up) thought they were being super clever and clear about who their product is for. And they probably sat in a room offsite somewhere for 2 days (or, God forbid, 3 days) and worked through exercises about who they’re for and somehow they all landed on “well, our buyer should be someone who works for a company that is obsessed with their customer, because we are not a good fit for companies that are dismissive of their customers.”

Adorable.

If you have “we’re for customer-obsessed brands” on your website, take a look at how long-defunct word processor producer Wang approached the challenge of saying which companies are right for their product:

Hey - there are 3 types of companies who don’t realize they need our product.

1. Companies that are growing fast.

2. Companies that do a great deal of correspondence..

3. Companies that require 100% accuracy and rapid changes of text.

4. Companies where nobody is afraid to ask, “I have a letter to send, can I hop on your Wang for a minute?”

(I made that last one up because I am 12.)

Maybe some of those descriptions are a little squishy (companies that require 100% accuracy), but being super clear about the target market is always effective.

Please steal that.

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This is Part 1! I have more examples like this that I will foist upon you next week in Part 2. I know that feels like a threat. It’s not - it’ll be good! We can learn so much from old technology ads.

As always, thank you for reading (and especially for sharing) Gobbledy.

I’m always happy to chat - here’s my Calendly link. If you want some feedback on something you’re working on, or want to show me an ad you like from 1952, put some time on the calendar. The reader conversations I’ve had have been amazing.