House ad as portfolio

The pattern

This still is filed under House ad as portfolio.

Define

The firm advertises itself by showing the work, not by describing the work.

Mechanism

Proof by exhibit. The portfolio is the claim. Captions stay short. The pieces carry the argument.

Verdict

We sell craft and the buyer can judge from examples.

Why it works

The headline asks a question every pioneer brand faces once rivals arrive, and the italic deck answers it at once with one named client, the O'Sullivan Rubber Company, so the principle and the proof arrive together. The reproduced 'Fatigue' drawing of a man bound for the bastinado turns an abstract benefit into pain the reader can feel, and its caption ties that beating to 'every step you take on hard leather heels'. The close gives one hard number counted in people, not dollars: New York sales grew from heels for one person in every four to one in every two, with the category plan unchanged.

The big idea

O'Sullivan kept selling the whole idea of rubber heels, not its brand against rivals, and its sales kept growing after competitors entered the market.

The offer

J. Walter Thompson Company's help with "basic problems of selling and advertising", as given to O'Sullivan for seventeen years. No terms stated.

The proof

O'Sullivan's New York sales grew in three years from heels for one person in every four to one in every two. The 'Fatigue' campaigns are shown, and the client relationship runs seventeen years.

Lines from the ad

Can non-competitive selling win out in a competitive field?

Like the victim of the ancient Bastinado, you, too, receive a blow with every step you take on hard leather heels.

sales in New York City have grown from a supply for one person in every four, to enough heels to keep one person in every two

Steal this when

When a brand that created its category faces new competitors and must show that selling the whole category, not attacking rivals, still grows its own sales.

The emotion

Written to Admiration. It makes the Say move.

It shows what O'Sullivan did, kept selling rubber heels as a category through the 'Fatigue' campaigns, and counts the result: New York supply grew from one person in four to one in two.