Mail-order catalog

The pattern

This still is filed under Mail-order catalog.

Define

A catalog that is the store: browse, choose, order, without a clerk and often without a website.

Mechanism

Assortment as argument. Density, numbering, and an order path do the closing. The book is the funnel.

Verdict

We have a range, remote buyers, and a way to take the order on the same object.

Why it works

This is a catalogue-in-miniature working on a customer at the moment of highest intent - the page is on the back of a song they already paid for. The printed chorus is a sampling device: the prospect can sit at the piano and consume part of the product for free, which converts a title into an experience before any money is asked for. Reproducing each cover at scale rather than listing titles in type preserves the visual brand of each song and lets the buyer recognise what they may have heard in a show or on a record. The footer widens distribution from one format to three, so the ad works whether the reader owns a piano, a player piano or a phonograph.

The big idea

The back of one song sells four more by reprinting each cover with two staves of its chorus, so a buyer at the piano can play before buying.

The offer

Four more Broadway Music Corporation songs as sheet music, for sale wherever music is sold, and also available for talking machines and player pianos. No price shown.

The proof

The lead song carries the Salvation Army seal and a claim that it is the only song the Army officially recognized and adopted; lyricist and composer credits sit on every cover.

Lines from the ad

BROADWAY SONG HITS

FOR SALE WHEREVER MUSIC IS SOLD

Also can be had for all Talking Machines and Player Pianos

Steal this when

Steal this when you sell a catalogue of near-identical items and the buyer has just bought one of them - the back of a receipt, a thank-you page, the last panel of a product insert. Use it especially when a fragment of the product can be given away as the argument for the whole.

The emotion

Written to Interest. It makes the Say move.

Each of the four song covers carries two staves of its chorus, so a buyer already at the piano can play part of the song free before seeking it wherever music is sold.