Your Body is Beautiful.?-?Marketing History

A perfect example of leveraging insecurities and talking to pain points in advertising.

If you ask a woman who trusts you about her insecurities, she will always say something about her body.?

Mostly, about her body shape.?

This isn't something modern or new to the world. This print add from 1987 carries some evidence for it.?

The Headline: Your Body is Beautiful. It’s Your Jeans That Are Out Of Proportion.?

The add starts with a compliment. It’s one of the best ways to start connecting with someone.?

This is a very noisy world. Not just today. It was noisy in the past and it will be in the future.?

It’s just how the world works.?

Do you remember a time when a stranger gave a compliment to you??

How did it make you feel? About you and also about the person who gave the compliment? Sure enough, It did make you feel good;?

not just about you but about the other person.?

According to psychology, The simple act of someone complimenting you paints a positive image of the person who gave the compliment in your mind.?

With the first 4 words, They got the reader.?

So as humans, we are validation-looking animals. we all have insecurities. we are always in search of validation about something.?

That’s the reality.?

Only what we search validations for is different from one another.

Here the add works really well with women who feel insecure about their body shape.?

For them, reading the words here brings them a pleasurable experience?

They feel relieved.?

The headline brings people an insight. A revelation. A new way of seeing the problem.?

People go like, ‘Ah! Maybe the problem isn’t about the look of my body. But, It’s about the clothes I wear.’

The body of the add takes things further. they get the reader to walk through the problem by talking to their pain points which nobody is willing to address.?

And it is enough to get them to read the entire piece to the very end.

It doesn’t catch your eyeballs and try to get them to listen to their braggings about their fugging jeans and their features.?

Instead, you can feel that they wrote these words for you.?

You can feel by reading the words;

they understand you.?

The words got a kinda rhythm too.?It has good variations.

The reading experience isn’t boring. You don’t wanna force yourself to focus because of the rhythm.

And on the side, they placed a picture of what it looks like wearing the jeans.?

It shows the evidence. Evidence for the claims they make in the add.?

Now, You may be wondering do people actually read an add for this long. ?

This add is from the good ol’ days when people had the willingness to consume things that are in long form. The attention spans were a little longer than today.?

But, No matter how much longer or shorter your add is, It doesn’t affect the success of the add much. What does is what’s in it.?

Remember,?

“Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad”?

— Howard Luck Gossage, a 1950s advertising expert?

I’m WD??.?

Your Next Read is Ready?—?

Try Not To Hear This.?—?Coca-Cola | Brilliant Advertising Teacher: You can’t hear pictures. Me:medium.com

Bonjour!???? WD here. This piece is from my exclusive newsletter. I appreciate you for spending your time and energy on reading something worth reading.

If you appreciate my life’s work, Tap the follow button and share it with a friend/ colleague who may find this article useful.

Thank you so much!