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men who was picking fruit in the doctor's orchard came up to the Webb house holding
six of the strangest grapefruit anyone has ever seen...(he goes on to tell the story of how mother nature created this almost magical ruby red grapefruit)... "...And when we pick the fruit, we're just as fussy. Every one of us takes a 'picking ring' when we harvest. If the fruit is small enough to pass through the ring -- we don't pick it! It simply isn't big enough to qualify as a Royal Ruby Red! Even after picking there are other careful inspections each fruit mush pass before I'll accept it. I size the fruit. And I grade it fro beauty. Sometimes the fruit will be wind scarred. I won't accept it. Or sometimes it will have a bulge on the stem and that we call "sheep nose." I won't accept it..." Using words like "picking ring" and "sheep's nose" really gives the impression of this grapefruit grower writing in his own language right to you. Okay, so what do fish and fruit have to do with your business? Lots. In fact, you can use the same "character" formula to attract more customers. Could you do something like this? "I'm not a professional ad writer. I'm a __<your profession>___ but what I have to say is so important that I decided to sit down to write you this message in best way I know. Lately I've had a lot of people asking me about __________. Even though I tried and tried to write a good ad telling people all about _______, I just can't do it. So I finally figured, why not just tell you exactly what I would tell you if we sat down for a cup of coffee..." This could a very persuasive ad or letter. And I'd bet it would do well. Another concept that goes along with this is using an"Open Letter" technique in the advertisement. This gives you the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart with the reader. Norman Cousins used this same powerful technique to launch his new magazine "World Review Magazine" after he resigned from the "Saturday Review". He ran his ad with the headline "An Open Letter to the Readers of The New York Times" and signed it himself. For 3 insertions in the NY Times he paid $15,711 and he brought back a healthy $54,923.00 worth of subscriptions. Not too shabby. Here's more... Max Sackheim is also known for originating the Book-of-the-Month club. But, he points out that he really wasn't the first to offer a subscription library. Way back in 1731 Benjamin Franklin had started a subscription library in the colonies. After he started his famous "Book-of-the-month" club many hundreds of others were started, some successful, some not. (My favorite is the "Kosher Salami-of-the-Month Club".)
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