This week I read The Irresistible Offer or How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less, by Mark Joyner. The book gave detailed instructions and insight on how to make your ad irresistible, and sell your product or service in a short period of time. In this week’s business essay I will be going through four famous ads(they are older), and seeing which ad confirms to Joyner’s standards of an irresistible ad.
The Elements of an Irresistible Ad
Before going through those ads I will be listing the elements of an irresistible ad, so that my readers will have some idea of what is going on.
1: A High ROI Offer.
2: A Touchstone
3: Believability
The first element: ROI stands for“Return on Investment.” Technically everything that a customer buys from you is an investment(something that they will benefit from), so a high ROI is an investment that gives you a lot of value compared to the money that you just spent.
The second element: a touchstone is a statement that addresses as many of these following questions. These questions are: here’s what we are selling, here’s how much it will cost, here’s what’s in for you, and the final thing here’s why you should trust us.
The third element: the third and final element believability is pretty self explanatory, your ad must sell something believable to work.
The Ads
Now that you know what the Irresistible offer is all about, I will be now going through four ads or commercials.
Ad One: the first ad I will go through is the M&Ms ad in 1957(I will be linking all four ads down below). The first thing I will look for in this ad is the high ROI; in this ad I found that there was not a high ROI, the only ROI that I found is the fact that M&Ms don’t melt in your hand but in your mouth. The touchstone of the ad only really answered two questions, here’s what we are selling and here’s why you should trust us, the other two questions were not really answered. As for believability, this ad is believable, it even showed a short cartoon on how the candies are made.
Ad Two: the second ad I will go through is the radio shack TRS-80 computer ad,1980. The high ROI of this ad is that this product can turn any color TV into an exciting game arcade, that it is also an educational aid, a home management tool, and an electronic information tool. The touchstone of the ad answered all of the questions, here’s what we are selling, here’s how much it will cost, here’s what’s in for you, and here’s why you should trust us. This ad was pretty believable, with video footage of people using the product in all the ways that the product could be used.
Ad Three: the third ad I will go through is the Commodore IBM PC, 1987(Australia). The high ROI of this ad is that this product can run the same programs from the computer that you use in the office, that it is powerful enough to power the largest programs, and it’s expandable. The touchstone of this ad answered all four questions, here’s what we are selling, here’s how much it will cost, here’s what’s in for you, and here’s why you should trust us. This ad was pretty believable, a little less so than the ads above but, still pretty believable.
Ad Four: the forth ad I will go through is the American Express ad in the 1960s. The high ROI of this ad is that this product is the credit card that you only need during travel and entertainment. The touchstone of this ad is a little vague, but the ad did answer here’s what we are selling and here’s what’s in for you. This ad in my opinion was the least believable out of the four ads I am going through, but near the end of the ad it got pretty believable.
Conclusion
Because I have gone through all four ads, I am now ready to answer the most important question: which ad confirms to Joyners standards of an irresistible ad? Well to begin with all of those ads fall into Joyner’s standards in different ways, and all of those ads were pretty good, some better than others, so the real question in my opinion is which ad is better at following Joyner’s standards. In my opinion the second ad is the best out of the four ads following Joyner’s standards. This is because it had all three elements of an irresistible ad, and it answered all the questions from the touchstone. The ad itself was pretty believable and entertaining, and made me want to buy the product.
The ads that I used:
M&M: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFDVm92Te_c&feature=emb_title
TRS-80 Computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kT207Jmhq4&feature=emb_title
Commodore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFh1u9t8BT8&feature=emb_title
American Express: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW1ab82biDI&feature=emb_title
The Dreamer 