Storytelling: Born in a Bathtub

As a marketing strategy, storytelling was born in a bathtub.

The year was 1951. Stories couldn't move merchandise, the Madison Avenue experts agreed.

Then an obscure shirtmaker from Maine, Hathaway, approached an equally obscure ad man, David Ogilvy, with only $30,000 to spend.

To win him over, the company's president pledged never to fire Ogilvy or change one of his ads.

Ogilvy had been mulling the notion that "story appeal" could sell products, and decided to test the theory with his new client's ads. 

He was sitting in his bathtub when the image of the Hathaway Man came to him.

Ogilvy appeared in the office the next day and instructed his art director to find a model who resembled novelist William Faulkner, who'd recently won a Nobel Prize, for the photo shoot. 

En route to the shoot, Ogilvy bought a 50-cent eyepatch at a Manhattan drugstore. He handed the eyepatch to the photographer and said, "Humor me."

Ogilvy's copy assured readers Hathaway shirts—like the men who wore them—were "in a class by themselves." 

"You will get a great deal of quiet satisfaction out of wearing shirts which are in such impeccable taste."

Ogilvy's first ad in the series ran in The New Yorker. Within a week, every Hathaway shirt in Manhattan was sold. "We have never seen anything just like it," said the magazine's ad manager.

The Hathaway Man soon catapulted the company to the top-ranking shirtmaker in the world—and storytelling to the top drawer in every marketers' toolchest.

Brevents Face Tight Marketing Budgets

Event producers in the UK on average spend only $10,697 to market a B2B event, according to a new survey by Eventbrite.

That amount is paltry compared to a US producer's average marketing spend, which is 28 times greater.

Brits spend the majority of their marketing money on outbound email. 

They also rely heavily on word-of-mouth to draw attendees, the survey finds.

Newshounds' Loyalty on the Rise

Consumers' loyalty to specific news outlets is on the rise, according to a recent poll by Gallup. 

Among consumers, 48% identify a specific medium (TV, Internet, radio, newspaper) as their main news source—down 10 points from three years ago; while 42% identify a specific outlet (Fox, Huffington, NPR, The New York Times, etc.) as their main source—up 12 points from three years ago.

"The shift in thinking on the subject is partly powered by Americans' increasing ability to gather news from a single organization on multiple platforms," says pollster Jim Norman. 

Loyalty to social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as news outlets is also on the rise—particularly among Millennials.

According to the poll, 15% of Millennials identify a social media site as their main news source, up from 3% three years ago.

While the shift in media habits will affect news outlets in their battle for customers, it also could spill into politics and social behaviors, Norman says.

Consumers may shut out viewpoints not presented by their favorite news outlet, and be more apt to mistake entertainment for news.

SMS: A Fantastic Way to Engage Customers

Sophorn Chhay contributed today's post. He is the inbound marketer at Trumpia, a mobile content delivery service that lets users customize their one-to-one marketing.

Marketers are jumping into SMS because texting keeps growing. Consider:

• 23 billion text messages are sent every (a Millennial sends 67 a day)
• 97% of text messages are opened
• 75% of people prefer receiving offers via text messages
• 80% of people use text messaging for business

Before you jump into SMS, check out our beginner’s guide below. Learn what SMS marketing is, how to set up a campaign, and how to test a campaign.

Past Lives Matter

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

— William Faulkner

My Irish heritage has always been a source of pride, as it is for 33.3 million other Americans. (For what it's worth, my genome shows I descend from an Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages, a lordly lineage that makes me all the more proud.)

But being a "mick" ain't all glory.

It wasn't sixty years ago micks, like other groups, were considered untrustworthy outsiders, a distaste that vanished from our society only with the election—and killing—of John F. Kennedy.

I still remember from childhood offhand remarks made by Wasp adults that made the distaste clear to me.

When I conjure up the past lives of Irish-Americans, I picture tin miners and tunnel diggers; road workers and factory stiffs; Civil War soldiers and civil servants.

These people are part of me; I stand on their shoulders.

There are past lives that are a part of me which I haven't thought about.

My alma mater, Georgetown University, sold 272 of its slaves "down the river" in 1838. The slaves, who built the school, were sold out of necessity. The income—$3.3 million in today's money—retired a debt that, if unpaid, would have meant the end to the institution.

I stand on their shoulders, too.