Craft-argument book

The pattern

This still is filed under Craft-argument book.

Define

A book or manual that sells a method by arguing it. Chapters as proof, not as decoration around a product.

Mechanism

Authority by treatise. The reader who accepts the argument has already accepted the seller as teacher.

Verdict

We can teach a craft in public and the teaching is the funnel.

Why it works

It sells an intangible by photographing it. Advertising service had no product to show, so Bates substitutes the plant - press room, bindery, addressing department, the young man who takes your card - and lets scale stand in for competence. The framed text pages do the same job typographically: the border says permanence and institution, not solicitation. The fee-credited-on-execution term removes the risk of buying a plan, and the cash-back space guarantee converts the era's biggest objection, the hidden agency rebate, into a written promise.

The big idea

The old-style agent does a quarter of the job; Bates does all of it, from plan and copy to printing and mailing, and photographs every department to prove it.

The offer

A written advertising plan for a fee, credited on the first bill if Bates executes it, and a syndicate service for retailers at a ten-dollar initial fee with cuts at sixteen cents.

The proof

Photographs of each department; a written guarantee that no client pays more for space than anyone else, with any difference made good in cash; eight writers; mailing output measured by millions a year.

Lines from the ad

GOOD ADVERTISING and where it is made

My business is the necessary one of selling goods by the use of type, ink and paper.

His work represents twenty-five per cent of the whole. Ours is one hundred per cent.

Steal this when

Use this when you sell a service whose quality a buyer cannot judge in advance and your real advantage is capacity - staff, equipment, throughput. Show the machine room by room instead of asserting expertise, and price the planning step separately with the fee credited against the work so the buyer can test you cheaply.

The emotion

Written to Trust. It makes the Say move.

A written plan whose fee is credited on the first bill lets the buyer test Bates small, and a cash guarantee that no client pays more for space keeps that first step reliable.