Direct-from-the-founder letter

The pattern

This still is filed under Direct-from-the-founder letter.

Define

A letter in one person's voice, written as if to one reader, signed by the person who owns the outcome.

Mechanism

Personal authority. The signature is the proof. The tone is the brand. A committee cannot write this and keep the mechanism.

Verdict

Trust sits on a person

Why it works

The cover sells cooking, not medicine: a woman in a checked apron lifts a steaming dish and the title is just "Tested Recipes", so the booklet earns a place in the kitchen. Inside, the recipes share pages with signed letters from women in Toronto, Hamilton and farm towns, each naming a complaint and ending with lines like "You may use my letter in your booklets to help other women", so the proof arrives in a neighbour's voice rather than the company's. The back page closes the loop with a free leather bookmark and a free "Private Text Book" on women's ailments for anyone who mails in the questions.

The big idea

A recipe booklet for the young housewife facing "grandma's problem" of what to cook, with Pinkham's medicines and women's letters of testimony threaded between the recipes.

The offer

Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, liquid or chocolate-coated tablets, and Sanative Wash at 55 cents; a coupon if the druggist has none; a free bookmark and women's text book by mail.

The proof

Named women's letters with addresses in Toronto, Hamilton and Saskatchewan, several offering to answer other women's letters; "the written endorsement of half a million women"; "98 out of 100 report benefit".

Lines from the ad

Tested Recipes

the little bride of today is faced with grandma's problem-what to cook.

The Vegetable Compound has given me strength and I will tell anybody about it.

Steal this when

When your product is personal or awkward to advertise and a useful household item, like a recipe book, can carry the pitch and your customers' own letters into the home.

The emotion

Written to Interest. It makes the Say move.

The cover offers only 'Tested Recipes' and a woman lifting a steaming dish, so the booklet is useful in the kitchen whether or not the reader ever buys the Vegetable Compound threaded inside.