GordonJ
April 9, 2022, 11:08 AM
Anyone who's studied the history of direct response advertising would have heard of the classic Joe Karbo ad, "The Lazy Man's Way to Riches"...
That one ad made Joe Karbo millions of dollars in the 1970s...
What you may not know is he wrote many other ads too...
If you're a serious student of the art of making money, you'll want to see those too...
You can find them all here...
https://joekarbo.com/joe-karbo-ads/
You're welcome... :)
Best wishes,
Dien
Thanks Dien,
There is a "lost" history of Joe, and many others circa the 60s and 70's.
It is the PRE fax era where many (Joe included) of the rising stars of Remote Direct Marketing were making a great deal of their moolah with ...
SALES LETTERS, which is really hardcore direct response.
Hard for younger folk to grasp, but these guys had to send LETTERS in the mail and/or pick up the phone and actually talk to someone, and long distance phone charges were killers (yes kids, we had to pay to call someone sometimes, in the next county).
Whereas these space ads could often take months, although there was a lot of use of so-called remnant space (ROP) but with the knowledge they could be easily bumped...
the letter in the mail was reliable, often faster, a matter of days and many a fortune were made with them.
And for Joe Karbo? See, his ads were brilliant, of course, but it was his letters that often brought in more business.
What is lost in the history of Remote DIRECT MARKETING are the wonderful letters sent, before the fax machine, and the results of these are hard to come by. Thank goodness we saw the GreenTree Press ones, eh?
And I was lucky enough to see much of that work because Ben Suarez (at Gary Halbert's urging) became a fanatic about keeping all the ads, letters, newspaper, magazine, radio and TV from not only his company but from most major players in the game back then.
Don't forget, one of the standard ways of thinking at the time, was...the Space Ad would often serve as lead generator. It took Harvey Brody and his computers (with Sherman Hunter's help) to give these guys the ability to create easy to manage house lists where the big profits came from.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of money came in with newspaper and magazine ads, but only a few were getting rich off of that front end piece.
Almost all of today's copywriting teachers and gurus focus on old SPACE ads, and few detail the letter and have the results to know what it actually did.
My opinion, a large % of the classic "great" ads, had results as much due to TIMING as the actual copy itself, albeit that is heresy amongst cop writing generals.
Due note the stories of Joe. He gets it across qucikly, like being turned down for a 200 dollar loan, now loaning a bank thousands (via CDs)...you don't need to drone on forever to tell a story.
Gordon
That one ad made Joe Karbo millions of dollars in the 1970s...
What you may not know is he wrote many other ads too...
If you're a serious student of the art of making money, you'll want to see those too...
You can find them all here...
https://joekarbo.com/joe-karbo-ads/
You're welcome... :)
Best wishes,
Dien
Thanks Dien,
There is a "lost" history of Joe, and many others circa the 60s and 70's.
It is the PRE fax era where many (Joe included) of the rising stars of Remote Direct Marketing were making a great deal of their moolah with ...
SALES LETTERS, which is really hardcore direct response.
Hard for younger folk to grasp, but these guys had to send LETTERS in the mail and/or pick up the phone and actually talk to someone, and long distance phone charges were killers (yes kids, we had to pay to call someone sometimes, in the next county).
Whereas these space ads could often take months, although there was a lot of use of so-called remnant space (ROP) but with the knowledge they could be easily bumped...
the letter in the mail was reliable, often faster, a matter of days and many a fortune were made with them.
And for Joe Karbo? See, his ads were brilliant, of course, but it was his letters that often brought in more business.
What is lost in the history of Remote DIRECT MARKETING are the wonderful letters sent, before the fax machine, and the results of these are hard to come by. Thank goodness we saw the GreenTree Press ones, eh?
And I was lucky enough to see much of that work because Ben Suarez (at Gary Halbert's urging) became a fanatic about keeping all the ads, letters, newspaper, magazine, radio and TV from not only his company but from most major players in the game back then.
Don't forget, one of the standard ways of thinking at the time, was...the Space Ad would often serve as lead generator. It took Harvey Brody and his computers (with Sherman Hunter's help) to give these guys the ability to create easy to manage house lists where the big profits came from.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of money came in with newspaper and magazine ads, but only a few were getting rich off of that front end piece.
Almost all of today's copywriting teachers and gurus focus on old SPACE ads, and few detail the letter and have the results to know what it actually did.
My opinion, a large % of the classic "great" ads, had results as much due to TIMING as the actual copy itself, albeit that is heresy amongst cop writing generals.
Due note the stories of Joe. He gets it across qucikly, like being turned down for a 200 dollar loan, now loaning a bank thousands (via CDs)...you don't need to drone on forever to tell a story.
Gordon
