[DRAFT] Headline

The Brewers Said Their Methods Were Nothing Special. A Copywriter Printed Them Anyway.

You saw how the story starts. Here is how it ends, and what it means for anything you write that has to sell.

[DRAFT] The ending the ad held back

If you watched the video, you left Claude Hopkins standing in the Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee. Schlitz was in fifth place. Every brewer in the country was printing the word “Pure” in larger and larger type, and nobody believed any of them.

Hopkins walked through the plant and asked about everything he saw. The brewers showed him rooms of plate glass where the beer was cooled in filtered air. Pumps and pipes cleaned twice a day. Wells sunk 4,000 feet for pure water, though the brewery sat on Lake Michigan. When he asked why they didn’t tell people any of this, they said every good brewer did the same.

Hopkins printed it anyway. Here is the part the video held back, in his own words:

“I told a story common to all good brewers, but a story which had never been told. I gave purity a meaning. Schlitz jumped from fifth place to neck-and-neck with first place in a very few months.” Claude C. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising (Harper & Brothers, 1927), p. 81

He didn’t have a better beer, and he didn’t have a secret. He had facts that his competitors also had and thought were too ordinary to print.

[DRAFT] The envelope on camera

That envelope is Issue #1. Inside is the full story of the plate-glass rooms, laid out over 16 printed pages, with the page reference for every quote so you can check it yourself.

[DRAFT] Salesmanship in print

The idea behind every issue

About 120 years ago a man named John E. Kennedy is said to have told Albert Lasker that advertising was “salesmanship in print.” The accounts of when he said it differ. Hopkins used the same phrase in 1927.

It sounds plain. It changed how the work was done. An ad was no longer a sign with the company’s name on it. It had to do what a good salesman does across a counter: give the buyer a reason. And the men who believed it kept score with coupons and sales figures. When an ad didn’t sell, they could see it.

Bellboy Press collects what those men learned while they were keeping score. Every story was printed in 1930 or earlier. Each issue takes one story and works out the idea in it, so you can use it on whatever you are selling this month.

[DRAFT] What's in Issue #1

What’s in Issue #1: “The Plate-Glass Rooms”

[DRAFT] Contents taken from the Issue #1 working file. Re-check against the final proof before publishing.

[DRAFT] The look

Why it comes on paper

Each issue looks like a file someone pulled out of an old agency’s cabinet. Black ink on 16 letter-size pages, stapled. Reproductions of the original ads and book pages, notes in the margins, and a Swipe File page you can pin to the wall. It comes flat in a kraft envelope with a rubber-stamped address.

It comes on paper because you’ll read it properly that way. Nobody skims a printed file at a red light. It sits on the desk until you’ve done the assignment.

[DRAFT] Who it's for

Who it’s for

• You write things that have to sell: ads, emails, pages, pitches, or your own shop’s signs.
• You’d rather learn from men who were judged by the coupons that came back than from this week’s advice.
• You’ll actually do a short assignment once a month.

It is not for you if you want templates to copy word for word, or if you won’t open an envelope. [DRAFT: adjust]

[DRAFT] Offer and terms

What it costs

Issue #1 is $9.95 [CONFIRM: shipping included]. If you like it, do nothing. Thirty days after you order, your membership continues at $47 a month, and a new issue arrives each month. If you don’t want it, reply to any email from us and we cancel it. You won’t have to give a reason.

[DRAFT] [GUARANTEE: decide whether to offer one, and write it here in one sentence.] [SHIPPING: US only? Confirm.]