SUBJECT: Ben Franklin's Guide to Success, Day 5

Dear {!firstname_fix},

Welcome to the first day of the Ben Franklin Success eCourse!

When advertising first developed and became popular across the
Western world, it took a form very similar to what we see going
on today. This is because in those early days certain principles
of advertising were codified and became “standardized” by virtue
of their proven ability to appeal to human psychology.

Advertising based on image was huge. Ask yourself a question:
who is the CEO of Exxon? The CEO of General Electric? If you
don’t know, don’t feel bad – the average person doesn’t either. 

But do you know who Henry Ford is? How about Andrew Carnegie?
And Rockefeller? These titans of industry made names for
themselves by putting their names out there, personally
endorsing the products produced by their companies. Does this
bear any similarity to today’s “mascots” like the Old Spice Guy
or the Fanta girls? 

Advertising also depended a lot on word of mouth in the early
days. It had to. Businessmen mostly had print based media like
newspapers or magazines to get the word out, and there were huge
percentages of the population still illiterate at the time. 

Word of mouth was everything. The “testimonial” that we see
today developed out of this tradition. So did the “viral video”
that is now seen as the cutting edge pinnacle of marketing.
These trends aren’t new; in fact, they’re downright
old-fashioned!

So, how about we take a novel approach to the question of how
best to learn to effectively advertise on the internet. How
about instead of looking to the future and trying to guess what
the next best thing will be, we instead look to the core ideas
of the past that are, as we’ve seen, in many ways still thriving
today. 

If we accept that the past has a great deal to teach us about
advertising, then we might well ask ourselves who in the past we
should look to. Well, why not the individual who was the best at
advertising, who pioneered many of these techniques that we
still find valuable today. Learn from the best, right? And 

who would that be?

Ben Franklin.

Yes, the founding father, Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin is hands
down the most innovative advertiser in the history of the game,
so much so that it was his newspaper that ran the first print ad
in the country. 

This guy also managed to effectively use principles of
advertising to sell not just products to people, but to cause
them to question their very values and in some cases stand up
for important causes. 

Clearly, he was an individual who recognized and utilized the
real power at the core of advertising, which is, after all, an
effort to reach the heart and mind of another person in an
effective and appealing way.

Great, you might say. What good does it do us if the best
teacher of advertising is long dead? The good news is that Ben
Franklin was a prolific writer who left behind a detailed
explanation for his success, as well as a clearly formulated
plan for how anyone who wanted to could easily become as great a
success as he was. 

When he was still a young man, he wrote a treatise on thirteen
virtues that he felt represented his core values, and which, if
practiced diligently, would lead one to be a success in whatever
one happened to undertake. 


P.S. 

http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com

We hope you enjoyed this eCourse and learn how to make killer
iPad apps with out comprehensive guide!

We will see you tomorrow for day 2 of your Ben Franklin Success
course and we'll tell you what the 13 virtues are!