Long-copy editorial

The pattern

This still is filed under Long-copy editorial.

Define

The sell is written as an article: argument, evidence, and length instead of a slogan.

Mechanism

Time-on-page as proof. A reader who finishes has already walked through the case. The format is editorial. The job is still the offer.

Verdict

The purchase is considered, expensive, or needs education

Why it works

It tells four money stories before it names the job: a traffic expert saves a Chicago concern over $300,000 a year on coke, another wins the Meeker Coal Co. a $122,000 refund, and a Kansas oil shipper loses $700 a month for not knowing the tariffs. By the time the reader reaches salaries of $2,500 to $40,000, they look earned, because "It's no hardship to pay a big salary out of losses turned into profit." Only then does the page sell the mail course, and the ask stays small: write for a free book.

The big idea

Freight experts earn big salaries because each one saves shippers far more than he costs, and the reader can learn the skill by mail at home.

The offer

A free book explaining the American Commerce Association's home-study Course in Traffic Management. Write stating your age, occupation and any traffic experience to Dept. 1012, Chicago.

The proof

Case figures up front: a $300,000 yearly saving on coke shipments and a $122,000 refund for the Meeker Coal Co. Named traffic managers at Cadillac, American Tobacco and others sit on its Advisory Council.

Lines from the ad

Why $5,000 Salaries are Common in this New Two Billion Dollar Industry

It's no hardship to pay a big salary out of losses turned into profit.

Every dollar wasted in freight charges represents a dollar of wasted profit or a dollar of wasted opportunity.

Steal this when

When you sell training for a job the reader has never heard of, and you can show in dollars what that job saves the people who hire for it.

The emotion

Written to Hope. It does neither clearly.

Proves why traffic experts earn well with named savings like the $122,000 Meeker Coal Co. refund, but shows no graduate of the course and no time the path takes.