Price-anchoring offer

The pattern

This still is filed under Price-anchoring offer.

Define

A higher reference number is shown first so the real price reads as a concession, not as a starting bid.

Mechanism

People judge a price against the first number they see. The anchor must be a real comparison or it collapses.

Verdict

We have a credible reference the buyer will accept

Why it works

The origin story does the work a product claim could not: starting with war nurses in France licenses a taboo purchase as patriotic, professional and medical rather than intimate. The nurses' quoted letter is the proof device, so the central claim comes from a third party with authority and no commercial interest. The etymology paragraph teaches the brand name deliberately, which matters because this is a product the buyer has to say out loud at a counter. Price and the plain-wrapper mail alternative then close the last two objections, cost and exposure, in a single small-type paragraph.

The big idea

Kotex is presented as a discovery made by war nurses in France and refined in a laboratory, now sold at a price every woman can afford.

The offer

Kotex at 5 cents each or 12 for 60 cents in stores that cater to women; or send 65 cents for a box of a dozen mailed in plain wrapper, charges prepaid.

The proof

A quoted letter from the war nurses saying they made sanitary pads from Cellucotton for their own use, plus over two years of laboratory experiments.

Lines from the ad

How War Nurses Found a New Use for Cellucotton

5¢ Each 12 for 60¢

INEXPENSIVE. COMFORTABLE. HYGIENIC and SAFE - KOTEX

Steal this when

Use this when launching a category nobody has advertised before and the buyer's real obstacle is embarrassment rather than price. Find a legitimate third-party origin, a profession or a war or a lab, and let the product arrive as a by-product of their work instead of as your invention.

The emotion

Written to Shame. It makes the Say move.

The war nurses' letter recasts a purchase women were ashamed to make as medical and patriotic, and the 65-cent box mailed in plain wrapper removes the shop counter where the shame sat.