Outrageous Advertising That's Outrageously Successful. Bill Glazer

      MY STORY: When I first joined my father’s menswear business—Gage Menswear of Baltimore, Maryland—in 1974, I thought of marketing in the same traditional way that every other menswear business in the world did. We copied what every other menswear retailer did, treated our customers right, and hoped they would remember us the next time they needed to buy something.

      At that time in Baltimore, there were fourteen menswear stores we were competing with. But over the years, the market changed and stores didn’t survive.

      There was movement from the city to the suburbs and changes in fashion, and our struggle in that market was to stay alive. No one actually believed we could thrive.

      My father, in the late 1960s, had actually opened a side business to help troubled menswear stores either liquidate their assets or hold a big sale to get them back on their feet. I became part of that side consulting business when I joined the family retail business.

      So, my early education was on two tracks: what I learned by working in the family menswear business and what I learned from consulting with other retailers.

      You’ll find it no surprise that the area I became particularly interested in, actually fascinated with, was marketing and advertising.

      I began collecting customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and purchase histories. I knew, based on their previous sales history, who to invite back and when to invite them. Of course computers, with point-of-sale software, helped a lot.

      For instance, if a customer were strictly a sales customer, we would invite him back for a sale. If another customer wanted the “new” thing in the beginning of the season, we would invite him back when our newest merchandise arrived.

      And all of this certainly helped us survive.

      Meanwhile, I was reading a book a week, trying to learn about business and especially marketing. I was attending trade shows and going to the optional seminars—all with the goal of improving.

      But it wasn’t until 1995, when I was invited by a good friend to attend a success seminar in Philadelphia, that I really began to understand what it takes to market my business to its full potential.

      There were a number of famous speakers there, including Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins. At the end of the seminar, there was a bonus speaker, a marketing guy named Dan Kennedy, whom I had never heard of before but perhaps became the most profitable happenchance meeting of my entire life.

      As Dan walked towards the stage to speak, my friend suggested we leave, but I said I wanted to hear the marketing guy. It was the end of the day. At that point, about 9,500 of the 10,000 people in the hall had gotten up and left.

      At first, I thought maybe I’d made a mistake by staying. I wondered if we should leave too. But we figured the parking lot would be jammed with everybody trying to exit at one time, so we stuck around to hear what he might say.

      Within minutes, I was totally mesmerized. He said new and different things about marketing, things I had never heard of before. Best of all, it all made sense. It was astonishing, a true “aha” moment. I just kept thinking, “I should be doing this in my own business.”

      He had one idea after another, and they were all great—really great. So I ran to the back of the room to purchase his Home Study Tools and Resources and began to dive into them during the train ride back to Baltimore from Philly.

      Then I did something that unfortunately few do. I put these tools and resources into motion in my business. He had actual templates that were smart and cost-effective. These were items that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce myself.

      I took his specific tools and reworked them for my business. This is what I call “S&D marketing,” which you’ll read more about in chapter 10. For the first time, I wasn’t copying what everyone else in the menswear business was doing. I was creating my own marketing system using Dan’s proven and successful concepts.

      For example, I incorporated sequential mailings to a list of my customers that generated a response ten times better than I had ever experienced before.

      My menswear business really took off.

      Of the fourteen menswear stores that were in Baltimore in 1974, only one survived. My store, Gage Menswear, was the sole survivor. But more than that, we THRIVED.

      How did we do it? I figured out how to get noticed and also how to be remembered with a systematic and yet OUTRAGEOUS approach to marketing that works.

      Why does it work? I don’t know. I am superman, but understanding why is not one of my superpowers. I really don’t know why it works.

      But here’s the important thing to know: it doesn’t matter why it works; it’s ONLY important to know that it does work. In fact, it works OUTRAGEOUSLY well.

      For example, one year I mailed a five-page handwritten letter on legal pad paper to 10,200 of my best customers telling them about an upcoming sale. You’re probably thinking, “Who has time to read five pages?” I’ll be showing it to you later in this book, but for now you just need to understand that this sales letter was the number-one most effective mailing I ever sent to my customers, and it has now worked equally as effective in dozens and dozens of businesses and industries.

      In it, I told a personal story and I included handwritten SHAMELESS BRIBE coupons. I used different-sized writing and something about it seemed hopelessly amateurish, and yet it was all done by design because it also came across as compelling—something that demanded to be read.

      Funny thing, this crazy mailing ended up winning the prestigious Multi-Media RAC Award at the 2002 Retail Advertising Conference.

       2002 Multi-Media RAC Award

      There were 500 entries, including many from major companies you have certainly heard of, but my little two-store chain won one of the highest awards given out in retail advertising. Simply OUTRAGEOUS!

      But the best part wasn’t the award. The best part was the results. Those were truly OUTRAGEOUS. And when you see the OUTRAGEOUS results that come from a well-developed OUTRAGEOUS campaign—taught in this book—you will realize that the only kind of crazy I really am is CRAZY SUCCESSFUL!

      BACK TO DAN KENNEDY: Two years after I heard Dan speak in Philadelphia, I noticed he was coming to Baltimore to participate in the same seminar I heard him speak at before. I wrote him a letter, stating that I would love to take him out to dinner and thank him personally for what he had done for my business in

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