2005 - 07-26-05

OK, just like "Can You Guess (Part I)?" I
received an amazing number of emails from people guessing
why this ad worked so well. Here's their guesses:

Headline: Many of my readers guessed the ad
worked so well because the headline was so dead-on-target.
This is certainly one of the reasons the ad was so
successful.

Dominated The Page: Many of my eagle-eyed
readers noted the fact this ad appeared in the classified
section of the paper... and... since it was a full-page
ad... there were no other ads to compete with it. Once
again, this is one of the reasons the ad was so successful.

The Word "Generous": Many people guessed that using
the word "generous" in my headline was pretty much iron-clad
insurance many women would be interested in what I had to
say. I think that's true. But curiously enough, as far as I
can tell, only one of the women who answered the ad was an
out-and-out gold digger. In fact, this particular woman only
read the headline and then dropped all the way down to the bottom
of the ad which told how to contact me. When I met her, it
was obvious she hadn't read the ad and my meeting with her,
if memory serves me correctly, lasted only about three or
four minutes. All the rest of the women who answered the ad
(at least this seemed true to me) were not gold diggers but,
they were women who didn't want to date any more losers.

Humorous: A lot of the guesses were the ad
worked because it was so humorous. I think that's true also.
Women, at least psychologically, like a man who can make
them laugh. Most women want to hook up with a guy who is
intelligently humorous.

All of these were good guesses. All of the
above were, indeed, factors which made the ad work. But
remember... what I said we were
looking for was the "stand out" reason the ad
worked. I put those ads in my newsletters to illustrate a
certain feature... a "stand out" feature... which made them
work so much better than other ads. Even
other winning ads.