What's in a lump of Coal?
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 ad runs one extended analogy and refuses to leave it - coal as advertising spend - so a reader who accepts the first statistic has already accepted the conclusion. Opening on a verifiable engineering number borrowed from another discipline gives the argument authority the advertising trade could not supply for itself. The waste framing converts the reader's existing budget into a problem, which is a far easier sale than asking for a new budget. The $3.50 to $.03 figure lands last and hard because it is the only number about advertising in a piece otherwise built on numbers about fuel.
Steal this when
Use this when the prospect is already spending with a competitor and the sale is efficiency, not adoption. A borrowed engineering or scientific analogy plus one dramatic cost-per-result figure is the structure to copy.