Eugene M. Schwartz - Breakthrough Advertising

www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com FOREWORD Welcome to the most sought after direct marketing masterpiece. This book was recently selling for over $900 dollars usedso I decided to re-issue it. It is a real privilege to bring Gene Schwartz's advertising wisdom back into print. We built a wonderful business based on his wisdom. He was a special delight and a treat to knowGene was 6'2" and reminded me of Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. But Gene had much more charm and wit and a fabulous, unforget table smile. Exciting sightwatching the multi-talented genius's fingers flying over the keyboard creating another brilliant ad.

And then he'd sit back with that great smile, read it over and enjoy it more and more. Gene wrote advertising copy lor the best direct marketers in America. And then he published a book in 1964 titled Hoxcto Double Your Child's Grades in School, following up with Howto Double Your Power to Learn and then Breakthrough Adver-tising in 1966. He was very cleverhe exchanged his copywriting for ac cess to mailing list names and promoted his own books to them! But then Gene had a stroke in 1978 and he had trouble typing... for it affected his right side. But he worked and iii www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com IV F O R E W O R D worked until he b e c a m e quite proficient typing with just his left hand.

My big ideaRetain Gene as a business consultant instead of a copywriter to guarantee him a regular income. He became very important to us in that new role. l i e helped very much in the creation of the Bottom Line/Personal concept and of our ed itorial style. Awesome. Then there was Gene III, the scientist, always reading the leading-edge science books and belonging to a very sophisticated group that met weekly to discuss the implications of those sci entific advances on society. Finally, there was Gene IVan amazing talent as an art col lector, together with his wife Barbara, a famous interior designer.

They built a fabulous art collection betting on Hans Hoffman Morris Lewis, Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Milton Averv well before anyone else had heard of them. Their first acquisition was by the color-pioneer Hans Hoffman. It took me years to appre ciate Hoffman's work. Barbara also helped me build an incredi ble collection of photographs that are now at the Art Institute of Chicago. On my first gallery tour with t h e m I discovered a crumpled photo by the Starn twins that had two words on i t Confusion/Order. That is what I'm devoted t o - b r i n g i n g order from confusion.

So Barbara and I built a very exciting Lessonsin Life collection. I was her first art advisory client. And it is with her generous permission that we bring Gene's classic book back into the world. Martin Edelston Founder and President. Boardroom Inc.Publisher of Bottom Line/Personal January 2004 www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com

This book was first published in 1966what seems to be three lifetimes ago. It was put out bv Prentice-Hall, a marvelous house: it sold onlv a few thousand copies.

But since it was published I have had people coming to me regularly to tell me that thev directlv credit reading this book with their making millions of dollars. This is amazing enough, but even more remarkable is the fact thatwhen I look back on itnot a single one of these people was a copywriter. H e r e is a book that is called Breakthrough Ad-vertising... and yet was used bv men who were not in the business of advertising at all, to make more monev than most of us ever dream of accumulating. How did this happen? Whv was a publisher, a financier, a manufacturer of novelties, able to make so very much monev with a book that is about putting sentences together? (The financier told me that, within one vear after obtaining the book, he had raised his net worth from $100.000 to $10 million). Are the sentences contained in the pages that follow actually that power ful? Can they change the fortunes of men so radically? Are thev far more universally adaptable than I had first t h o u g h t... so they are no longer about advertising products, but literally about open-ing whole new markets for them? www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com \1

Therefore, eighteen years later, when Boardroom Books asked me to republish this text.

I had to study it again, with the fresh eyes of a person who had not read it in all that time, to see what was the real content of my book, and its real effect on its readers. I did. I discovered the secret. And I am using this introduc tion now to admit my red-faced shame. What I had thought I had written those mam- years ago was a book on advertising; what I actually put down on these pages was an entireh' different book, on a far broader theme: There is a way to develop an entirely new market for a newor an old product. That way involves a certain number of clearlu-defined steps.

And in this hook 1 show ou every single one ofthose steps. ' J As you mav know, all of usno matter what official designa tion we give the industry we do business m - a r e actually on a deeper level, in exactly the same profession. We are all'simplycreating or exploiting markets for our products. When the market is born, our business is simultaneously given birth. When it grows so does our share of it. When it is mature, our sales charts develop heir first aches and pains. helping g i v e birth to new markets for our products. helping g i v e birth to new markets for our products.

All the other functions" we or our business, p e r f o r m - t h e manufacturing, distribution service hnancmg, and all the r e s t - a r e simply adjuncts to this vital central process. We are, in a single phrase, "Market-Makers." We sense each new market in its turn. We test and evaluate its size and scope We gauge its true potential financial strength, and then we focus all the people, all the money and all the desire that makes it up on one ultimate object: our own product. Most of the time, the market exists before our product, and we simply tap its present strength. But, m this era of constant www.getwsodo.com www.getwsodo.com

change, we ourselves mav help give it its first viable financial form. or want to walk around all dav with music plugged into their ears... or would like to spend three air-conditioned hours in a faraway galaxv, battling with light-swords against evil and tyranny. or would like to spend three air-conditioned hours in a faraway galaxv, battling with light-swords against evil and tyranny.

Making a market, then, is not. as I thought when I originally wrote this book, simply a matter of making an ad. It is also the making of a product. And it is the making of a conduit through which that product can be obtained bv the people whom you have made desire it more than an equivalent sum of their money. This book outwardly talks about the sentences that make up the pri mary appeal of that product to that market. But its true and deeper message is found when it is interpreted as a market-diviner, and a market-intensifier.

In other words, its message will show vou how to find your "dream" market, and how to drive it into a na tional "feeding frenzy." And I have also made an equally important discovery upon reviewing this book since it was first published. The examples in its pages have grown slightly older, but the principles that these ex amples manifest are timeless. For example, if I were writing this book today, its examples would show more appreciation of feminism, environmental awareness, health and fitness striving even the blessed sexual revolution. Thev would be more open and more frank than thev could have been then. All this is for the good

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