Atari PONG arcade sales flyer for operators
The pattern
This still is filed under Headline · visual lockup.
Define
Headline and picture are one sentence. Remove either half and the claim disappears.
Mechanism
Lockup. The line names what the image will not. The image shows what the line cannot. They are not redundant.
Verdict
We have a picture that completes a short line: wit, contrast, or a second meaning.
Why it works
The flyer sells a product nobody had ever seen by refusing to be exotic about it. Video skill game is borrowed from the vocabulary of the existing amusement trade, so the buyer files it next to pinball rather than next to science fiction. The features list is ordered by operator economics, not by technology: attract mode and automatic serve solve the empty-cabinet problem, solid state and a one year warranty answer the service-call objection, and high profits, low key cabinet and 25 cents per play are three ways of saying it earns in good locations. The cabinet photograph is doing the heaviest work, because a route operator needs to see the box that will stand in his bar, not the game on the screen.
Steal this when
Use this when you are launching a genuinely new category to professional buyers who are paid on returns. Name the new thing in the old category's language, then rank every feature by the buyer's economics instead of the product's cleverness.
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