Tuesday, June 29, 2004 – Thumbing through the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine last week, an ad for eBay Motors — smack, dab in between the “Correspondence” and “Rock & Roll” sections — stopped me dead in my tracks.
An extraordinarily simple, no-frills composition, it uses a story about “Brothers John and Tom [who] want a great way to sell their cars” to illustrate the benefits of peddling wheels on eBay versus the old standby, the classifieds. After seven days, John, who uses eBay, “sells his car for a great price,” while Tom, who went the old-school route, finds his “ad is used as litter box lining.”
It’s hip, funny and irreverent, sure, but it’s also textbook in formula, drawing on a case study of two young men and employing fear tactics to drive (no pun intended) the point home — not unlike a legendary Wall Street Journal direct mail package written by Martin Conroy three decades earlier.
But Conroy’s story about another two young men would be nearly impossible to top. After all, his story was only recently dethroned as the newspaper’s control after a 29-year reign, and has been heralded by many as the single most successful ad ever. Yes, ever.
In his story, the protagonists “graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both — as young college graduates are — were filled with ambitious dreams for the future. Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion. They were still very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern service company after graduation and were still there. But there was a difference. One of the men was a manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.”
Of course, the implication — and the author draws it masterfully — is that the more successful of the two young men read The Wall Street Journal.
That is the brilliance of Martin Conroy. That is the brilliance that captured the emotions of countless would-be subscribers to the tune of an estimated $2 billion in sales. And that is the brilliance to which every direct marketer — including the creative team behind the eBay Motors ad, I’m sure — aspires.
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