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Old October 5, 2006, 10:47 AM
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GordonJ GordonJ is offline
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Default The little known, but somewhat interesting, history of marketing begatting...

In the beginning was the word...

ADVERTISE.

This is a just for fun post, I might even mention Mike Enlow somewhere in it, OOPS, just took care of that obligation.

We have a very rich history here in Akron, OH relating to Mail Order or the Direct Marketing Industry. If you ever visit and stay at the Quaker hotel, you'll see some of the very first direct marketing promotions ever created by the forerunner of the Quaker Oats cereal company.

A couple of years ago I spent many an hour in the ARCHIVES of the Akron Library and found tons of ads from the Civil War era through the 20's, the FIRST heyday of Mail Order when "salesmanship in print" was discovered.

Bikes that sold for 100 bux, and they sold thousands of these, shipped by rail,were advertised in just about every popular publication of the day.

And the longest running ads for a single non-consumable product that has been advertised...BINOCULARS. They were selling WAR surplus binoculars in 1864. WOW. And the ads read pert near the same as they do today.

Anyhow, on with the history lesson.

Patent medicine was rampant, and those ads, which read a lot like the Magalogs you get in the mail today that have been written by star copywriters, was one of the turning points. Patent medicine actually led to legislation about advertising and helped create the FDA and the FTC.

OK. Then the depression came. Then WW II. And then the Baby BOOM and the building of suburbs and the second great wave of Mail Order/Direct Marketing came about.

Some of these "pioneers", such as Mr. Set it and forget It, Ron Popeil
tapped into a hungry market of consumers with cash to spend. Others like E. Joseph Cossman created fortunes (and lost them too)...as people like a young Harvey Brody learned from these DOERS of the day (as he says in his document)...

Harvey was a quick study and grasped the best of the best of these pioneers and incorporated them into his business. Fast forward a few years.

Jay Abraham sat at Harvey's feet for a couple of years learning everything he could from him. Harvey did this (teaching Jay) as a favor for a friend, whom I encountered as a child at Kent State University while being part of a Speech pathology study {I had my tongue clipped shortly after birth...who knew? I could have been Gene Simmons back-up)...anyhow...

Then the EVENT took place. In a strange place called Los Angeles.

A group of young and old men came to a seminar. I can't tell you all of their names, but you'll recognize a few: Gary Halbert, Ben Suarez, Jay Abraham...and many, many more men who today are MASTERS.

What was the reason for this gathering of future marketing superstars?

They all came to hear what Harvey Brody had to say. And he said enough to these people that almost every single one of them took his message to heart and went on to marketing fame (or infamy in a couple of cases) and many fortunes (and many lost ones too).

Jay Abraham took note. And it wasn't too long before he was begattin'

His PROTOGE program was wildly successful for him, and many of today's marketers that many of you would recognize, paid that 10 grand plus for Jay's brain dump...and went on to their own glory.

Somewhere along the way, Mike Enlow showed up. And he says (according to his past postings) that he studied and learned from all the Masters until the point he had past them all up. Well, I believe he really believes that.

We're into the 80's now and for about a decade before the Net, say 85 to 95 and a few years after...the GURU'S exploded.

They had attended one of Gary Halbert's Seaside Seminars, Joe Sugarman's Retreats, Jerry Buchannan's Write in the Woods Bootcamps, or one of about a dozen or so Workshops, Seminars and such where they CLONED themselves.

Which is why so much of their copy and work sounds so much alike today.

Mike Enlow was one of a score of people who cashed in on the Mail Order/Direct Marketing...boom of the 80's and 90's and was one of the first ones to bring his stuff online too.

Then he got married and all heck broke loose. OR something like that.

What this says is that the SYSTEM can be right for the right kind of person. That people can learn how to do things like the MASTERS.

I put Mike Enlow in that class with Drew Kaplan. LOVE em both, but, and this is just my OPINION, they are not going to catch up after they took so much time off...I believe they lack the drive and energy they had when they were KILLING us with killer copy and products. But, I reserve the right to be wrong.

Anyhow, this is your Remote Direct Marketing History for the Day and now I'm back to Chatteling.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Gordon Jay (Mr. MARKETING History) Alexander

PS. Some of the ads that appeared in 1865 are still running today, almost unchanged. That is 1865!
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