I am reluctant to criticize any website or the business owner. I’ll simply ask questions.
I do indeed want you to know; Usually well trained and experienced advertising copy writers would charge a high price to build a page and write for you. During this introduction phase, I include it free to help all of us get started.
Most of what I am doing here is explaining why I am qualified to write and produce advertising for businesses like yours.
Please click the link. It will open in a separate tab. Then look at my questions. https://outlinebrooklyn.com/collections/shop-all?page=4
1. Are you attracted to the models? Do you like what each is wearing?
2. Look at the type size particularly in the page footer. How many of YOUR customers have 20/20 vision without some sort of “corrective lenses?” I have seen smaller and nearly invisible type fonts.
See this? This is moderate
This is moderate compared to what I’m remembering. This explains why pages in this website look as they do.
I study the great names in advertising and marketing. I often drop little quotes from them. “Pictures draw the eye, words sell.”
“Familiarity breeds comfort.”
Therefore, if the older person with discretionary income cannot read the words, s/he is not buying! (I have also studied rules about type faces and fonts.) Thus, I maintain the view that the font should be dark, dense, bold, black against a soft nearly white or softly colored background, with serifs. It should be the easiest read font available.
Certainly you can break that rule but type faces should be large enough for older eyes to read. Those older eyes are owned by people who have the money to walk across your threshold and consider what you offer.
Many women and men website designers are under age 30. They have no idea what it is to have their own vision deteriorate at they grow older. This is considered a normal characteristic of older eyes.
Have a look at this page from Melbourne, Australia. It’s a beautiful website, and their information is valuable, but I think the type style is too thin and small for comfortable reading. Perhaps people who are too young and not wealthy enough to read it can see it well. The older gentlemen who can afford and want to buy, are probably repelled by it.
see: https://www.tailorsmark.com.au/tailored-suits/#how-it-works for an example of type face that only young eyes can read.
The company sells custom tailored suits, and apparently do a fine job. There are few men under age 30 who will buy a bespoke suit. The older gentlemen who can afford such clothing cannot read the ad because the type size and style is wrong for their eyes. The very small, slim type face is repelling the very customers this tailoring shop wants!
The needed change to solve this problem can be accomplished in a few minutes and should be done for him by the original website builder, at no charge. I have read other font designers who taught me. I favor 16 pixal and larger type.
I look at the photos. Some of the men need a shave. I just have the impression that the photos are sending the wrong message and are repelling the prospective customers they want.
If you intend to sell fine business suits to gentlemen the model must likewise look the part. He must be clean shaven, wearing a tie, and the trousers should be hemmed to fit just above the toe box and heel of his shoes. That’s my opinion.
The author in the late 1970’s working for Microsoft was wrong saying that non-serif fonts were best for computer monetors. He was wrong then, and is wrong now. I think he cursed the internet.
These young web designers are expensive. They have by survey told marketing firms that they have never sold anything in their lives. They often said that people who cannot write computer code are stupid. This tells me they have a very low social I.Q. They prefer to avoid people and hide behind their monitor. They insist that “beautiful” web pages will sell.
The beautiful website with modern models who won’t shave and look clean or cover their bodies with tattoos and wear hair styles for Space Aliens, do not make a good impression on today’s older and wealtheir gentemen who can and will buy bespoke suits.
It appears to me, these non-salespeople who build websites create expensive disasters. Do you remember the Chevy Nova car? In English “Nova” refers to a star.
In South American Spanish, Nova means “Doesn’t go.” Is it any wonder that Chevrolet shipped a lot of Nova’s to South American but couldn’t sell them? We must think of as much of the customer’s aspects, opinions and environment as possible.
BMW for a longtime, couldn’t sell to younger people in California. An Ad agency surveyed and discovered that their advertising was transmitting the idea that BMW cars were driven by older, dislikable men. They had to change their advertising to change public opinion, and then they started selling more cars to younger customers.
The late great name Clayton Makepeace produced a lot of financial newsletter advertising. He often targeted Life Insurance Salesmen saying they were greedy. It so happened he was insulting the very people who might have purchased the sales letters he was selling, and he finally admitted he had made a huge blunder. I read his sales letters for years and watched him make many language blunders. The common speach heard around Ashville, North Carolina is NOT the common language used all over America. Insisting we should all write with that “accent” is a blunder.
If these website builders are fans of gimics like boxes with flashing blue borders, they may be pleased with themselves when they install such a thing, but they’re not selling anything. Advertisements should NOT be there to simply keep your name or your brand before the public. They must SELL something — even if only to sell the customer to walk in and look!
Gimics sell nothing. Video is wonderful. It may slow pages upload time but that is mitigated by new technology as Internet development continue.
An exciting and informative video can change an “any” watch buyer into a Cartier Watch buyer. I placed videos on this Cartier Watch ad and also did for the Ford Lincoln vehicle Dealer in Milford Connecticut. I don’t exactly like those videos, that those were that Lincoln produced.
This attention to detail in printed advertising, is extremely important in my opinion. The information that you and I provide can turn readers into buyers.
Let’s never forget, the purpose of advertisg is to SELL Something. It should not cost. It should PAY. It’s not there to be memorable or put your name before the public or to make football game watchers giggle. If it doesn’t make you want to switch beer brands or buy better clothing or cars, or visit a particular doctor or attorney, it’s worse than worthless. It’s a very expensive waste of time, effort and energy to broadcast for no result. It is a betrayal.
The Super Bowl sponsor promoting his beer expects more sales. If he does not get more sales he was betrayed.
Placing a yellow tiny, slim typeface against a yellow background is simply making the page unreadable. I saw this done by a young women page designer with tattoos all over her arms and across her half exposed bust. She wore triple colored hair. She was the designer of the demonstration page in a video for a maker of web page editing software. She thinks this is “art.” I think it is — something less.
Students of Jewish and Christian theology don’t tattoo themselves. This was entirely a contradiction and I found it offensive. I’m not buying their software.
Who Is Buying Higher Priced Products and Services?
Pictures draw the eye. WORDS help shoppers buy. The great masters of advertising will therefore agree, if you can’t read the words you won’t buy.
For many of us past age 45, having big easily read print is necessary. We have a Website Production Industry built with and by mostly younger people who have enviable eyesite. They see tiny, thin, grey print, and often don’t think to use heavier black print compatible with Older Eyes.
The people with serious discretionary money to buy the better material goods our modern society offers, can’t read what is presented in tiny, thin typeface or dark yellow type set against a lighter yellow background! The artists with tri-colored hair and tattoos over half their body call this beautiful, but advertising agencies and writers call it “insanity.” In the end, Pictures draw the eye. Words Sell!
We are told HERE that nearly everyone in America owns a cell phone or smart phone, BUT what portion of the American population shops with a mobile cell or smart phone?
The statement I wanted to find is clearly expressed HERE, and this is it.
- Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, with 69% of Gen X, 65% of Younger Boomers and 64% of Older Boomers owning these devices.
- Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop: 70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop. {As of 2023, the millennial age range is between 27 and 42. Feb 22, 2024} This group age 28 and older are the population buying expensive cars, jewelry, clothing, travel packages, expensive hotel reservations, and dining in 4 and 5 star restaurants.
- Tablet computers, such as the iPad, are most popular with American adults age 65 and younger. 4% of all adults own this device. Why? Because the print is big enough for them to see on a tablet. Instead of going around with a cell phone in their pocket they keep a tablet in their briefcase.
To summarize all of this; Cell phones are saturating and smart-phone sales are falling. Most young people with low incomes buy less expensive ones for general communication, social chatting, and entertainment. Few can afford the variety that cost over a thousand dollars.
Many spend a lot of time in college and alone at home chatting and carousing with strangers. This is extremely unhealthy behavior for both body and spirit.
They are a different population and must be approached differently. In any event, IF they can’t afford better cars, better clothing, houswares, homes, or health care, it is likely they are not and will not be your customers. Don’t produce advertising for them.
If you intend to sell fine business suits to gentlemen the model must likewise look the part. He must be clean shaven, or if bearded have a dignified well trimmed beard. He should be wearing a tie, and the trowsers should be hemmed to fit just above his shoe goe box and heel That is my opinion.
Similarly, women’s clothing should fit well and cover the woman for the most attractive benefit. Of course these are my personal opinions. I have not surveyed several thousand people to see if they agree.
If you’re beyond age 45 or 50, you likely imagine that what is being taught today in high school is the same as what you learned. That’s a huge mistake.
The “No Child Left Behind” program to change American Education is graduating masses of people who are functionally illiterate. They’re not finding employment. They have become the Most Students Left Behind generation. Colleges are making their courses less challenging because the students are not able to study the material they wee teaching. The new college students come to college unqualified to be there.
Asians come to America and get the jobs the American younger people apply for but are considered unqualified to hold.
They are not the group that is purchasing big ticket and higher priced, better quality and luxury items. They’re not buying expensive cars, jewelry, and clothing, nor are they flying across the world, sleeping in expensive hotels, or dining in 4 and 5 star restaurants.
If you are raising or housing one or more of these people the best thing you can do is buy books or computer applications that teach people to read using the “old fasioned (effective)” methods of phonics and breaking words into sylables, then sounding out the letters until it is finally understood.
You may remember the movie “Driving Miss Daisy”
The driver couldn’t read and elderly Miss Daisy taught him enough to find a relative’s grave marker in a couple of minutes. That movie was a loud call for the educational system to be reformed.
No one paid much attention. Now we have people from Iran, The Caribbean islands, Japan, South Korea and China coming to America and taking jobs that Americans should hold. I see that as an inditement pointed toward the American compulsory public education system.
When software editing programs/applications/themes are presented for sale, most will remind us that they render well on cell phones. But that simply means a picture appears and then you have to scroll down to see the words that should be seen beside the photo. The advertisement makes best impact to people who prefer and use bigger screened monitors as found in some larger laptop and personal computers.
I expect the young people might look at your clothing, Cartier watches, and Lamborghini sport cars, but they’re not buying them. They presently are struggling to survive! (The broad picture of the generation younger than age 25 is, for me, profoundly disturbing.)
Very obviously, merchants and marketers must focus more on serving people age 26 and older. They are those who will come to visit and pay for higher priced goods and services. As years pass you will be forced to think and change products that suit the younger now growing older public for features and prices.
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I Should Introduce Myself
I am Dr. Stephen Newdell, presently working near Cebu City, The Philippines.
< Summer 2014
I was raised on Long Island, schooled and worked in Boston and New York, more hightly educated at Chiropractic college in Davenport, Iowa, Licensed and practed for several years near Seattle, Washington.
I returned to the advertising world in the year 2,000.
I made a blunder moving to Washington. I should have moved to PORT Washington. I would been much happier there.
I was raised in Bayport, on the Long Island South Shore, and know the area and local culture somewhat better than many not raised in the area.
I’m happy to write better advertising “copy” for nearly anything and for anyone. I’m doing my best to maintain older fashioned standards of propriety and decency. I am very sensitive to the requirements for honesty and decency in the Brooklyn and wider New York City Area culture.
When possible I hold advertisers in the same borough or neighborhoods together by location, to make it easy for the customers to visit and to show respect and appreciation for the cultures in the community.
For example, there is a part of New York City where ladies are expected to dress modestly. I try to hold advertisers of clothing, food, cameras, electronics, doctors, attorneys, investment advisors and educators of that community in an order that may not be perfectly alphabetical, but rather, it shows repect for the culture of that community.
I will be happy to do the same for various ethnic communities around New York City and the areas beyond. You simply must tell me what you want. I’m happy to collaborate with you.
I’ll occasionally send a survey to ask if you need for me to make improvements. If you want something changed I can do that. Just reach me with the ticketing system or on the Facebook Messenger Link.
This is not “my magazine;” it’s OURS. It is for Business Operators and our Readers. When you support my effort and have a bit of faith that it will grow and pay for itself, everyone will benefit. Business owners can send a message to me. When you sign on, our best communication links will be provided. I favor the ticketing system.
“Steve, I need help quick! I need to changes prices for this coming holiday weekend.”
Yes! I will do all humanly possible to get such assignments done quickly. Sometimes you’ll be on a chat line with me while I change a price and then I’ll say, “OK, it’s done. What else do you need changed?” You can’t buy that service from most businesses now, but we will endeavor to deliver quickly and work with you to make changes that you need completed.
I also like to check everything for sentence structure and grammar errors. Using the right words or phrases in ad copy can make a big difference in sales response. We should try to display everthing in its most favorable light. IF I have your permission, I will add that service to make your advertising draw more response.
“Steve, can you move that picture to the paragraph above?”
…..Yes, just a moment please. ….OK, refresh your page. Is this what you wanted?
If we have 3 or more days lead time we can usually get anything about a sale or special event posted in time to display the information you want to tell. I want to be more than “that editor.” I want to be your distant friend and assistant.
I was born into the culture that predominately lives in the area of N. 5th St. and Bay Ridge Avenue between Battery Park City, Brooklyn Heights, and Queens. I presume you might know the area, and the culture.
These people are generally quite well educated, and conservative in thinking. They dress modestly. They look at your face and listen without interruption while you speak. They make mental notes of what you’re saying and formulate careful answers.
They often are quietly the economic upper class of Brooklyn, New York and some may be found working anywhere in the better parts of the city. They and their progenitors worked diligently and sacrificed painfully to reach their economic strata and they are blessed because of the understandings taught to them. It’s not, (as some shyster advertised,) because they whisper magic incantations.
Their success is built day by day because they do their best to follow the right ways of living a successful life.
I say this so you will understand, when I advertise clothing, it is with respect to the culture and the other advertisers.
I am doing my best to offer an excellent venue at a reasonable price to help all of us continue to maintain our hard won prosperity.
That also is why I will be displaying sub-categories in this site: Women’s clothing is so varied it must be displayed into groups of various styles for particular purposes from formal wear to trendy to very casual.
This site, where we are now: is an unusual blend of travel and fashion magazine styles. Advertising prices will be displayed transparently. I won’t hide prices and hope you’ll negotiate. My prices will fit most inquiries. Custom work is available for an additional fee and we can work that out if and when the time is right for you to ask for specialized customized work.
The only way I know to “sell” such an advertising idea is to produce and display it. As it gains more traffic, early “investors” will be rewarded with more exposure in new different display modes. This offer may cease for new accounts after mid-October 2024.
I’m available to work up a customized page for you.
You might make an offer to me that I’d be crazy to refuse and I will be thankful for your help. I’ll provide additional exposure for you as the website and audience grows. I cannot say exactly what will happen after the first week of October and then the November elections. I think these will be important months. Your business should be in place on the magazine before then. I may be forced to raise prices and reduce the free exposure space offers at that point.
I will produce additional pages and service as fast as I (or we) can produce it for those who want “White Glove Custom Service.” I’m thankful to have the opportunity to work with and serve you, and my friends around the Brooklyn and the Western Long Island area.
These following pages open in a separate tab. Most of my pages do. When you close the page you’re viewing, you’ll be back where you had been.
Have a look at this as an example of what I can do for a low price with a little sandwich and pizza shop or a small restaurant. This was done rather quickly and if the business mentioned wanted to have a larger page made for them I would be happy to do that work. In his case, he could do with a line near the end of his page offering weekly or weekend special offers. I put in a fictitious example. Something more serious could go there and boost his sales significantly.
If you are honored to manage a larger restaurant you might like to see this ad for LAVO in Singapore. The same company owns a big Italian Restaurant in New York City.
Visit here to the cover page for the Singapore Shopper Magazine. Cruise through if you would like to, and see other restaurants and be sure to see the ad for Cartier Jewelers. I think that will please you. I did something interesting for the Ford-Lincoln Car Dealership in Milford, Connecticut in similar manner. They have videos on YouTube which I can embed and I thought that was very useful, even exciting for customers to see. In this case, rather than dig for more of the same information everyone gives, I thought this introductory page and links to their site would be better.
In the near future I can find people qualified to come into your business, do an interview, produce video that can be posted onto YouTube and I can imbed a video for your business, whatever it is. So then, for a low price, you have a web page hosted on this magazine site and it will include a video that shows customers what to expect. They like that!
Always remember you are selling the future to that customer. Don’t lose him in a technical demonstration of a comptuer in a car that does everything including drive the car for you. Show him/her that their comfort, safety and pleasure will be enhanced with this vehicle.
You’ll like it too when you compare work quality and prices compared to some of the “so called ad agencies” that entertain, but can’t sell anything.
With a quick look at YouTube I see there have been movies and documentaries produced about Ferrari and Lamborghini Urus.
Anything we can do to bring these movies before the viewing public will help these dealers make a psychological impact and some viewers may be willing and able to buy and safely handle such a vehicle as either of these.
The dealers of these higher priced vehicles simply must tell me when they’re ready for me to proceed and we can work together on this project. I’m certain many advertising buyers want to colaborate with the ad agency or magazine editor, and I welcome you to work with me.
Similarly, videos of 5 or 10 minutes or more can be produced for YouTube about any sort of business from books to wedding gowns, from cafes to Fire Island beach house rentals. What can we think up to do for YOU?
For the business operator; there is no limit as to the number of photos and amount of written information I can add. I must charge for that work, but as it draws in more customers it will repay its cost, of course.
I’m learning more about operating newer page building software. (I’m a writer, not a highly trained computer technician.) I am hiring a technician to build more comlex web pages. Soon the appearance of web pages will be even better. Those advertisers who help us develop by getting involved early will be Well Rewarded with better prices and more exposure.
I’m the first with this concept. No one else is mixing shopping with the appearance of a Travel and Fashion magazine. No one presently offers such low prices to reach the shopping public in such a bold, beautiful magazine
As we grow I’ll be adding our own social medium and more services to improve the shopping experience for readers, and the marketing effort of sellers.
Please be advised, that in some cases for a short while, you may click on a page and realize you are in my sister site developed for Singapore. This is temporary. I am making (somewhat laborious) efforts to move pages written there in November and December 2023, to the New York City Area Magazine site.
All of those pages open in a separate tab so you won’t get lost. When you close the page you’ll be back in the previous tab which is the NYC Area Shopper site again. It’s very simple and if unfamilar to you, it will be obvious after you use this method twice.
You can view these websites on a phone. It renders as all phones do, but if you have a PC or Laptop you’ll get the full visual impact that is necessarily lost when viewing with small cell phone pictures.
If just for your interest, you want to look around the Singapore site that’s great; Please do. Enjoy looking. When you close those pages you’ll be back at the New York City Area site again.
The Making Of A Salesman
You have experienced from your own business that you needed time to learn to manage, learn marketing and learn to be a good salesperson. For reasons I don’t know, we sometimes forget all of the struggle to get it right and imagine we can pull any young person off the sidewalk and make him/her into a great salesperson in 3 weeks. That is quite impossible.
The best ad copy writers worked in the sales end of the advertising world and spend their “free time” reading the educational works and advertising copy written by the greatest of the past (and sorrowfully gone) writers of yester-years. I am one of those guys. I required more than 3 weeks to learn it and I’m still learning.
I’ve been seriously interested in this work since I was age 15, That was the year 1965. In one way or another I’ve been interested in and working in advertising, marketing and sales for 59-years. Even while running a clinic I was comparing and selling “us” versus “them.”
Anyone who imagines he can pull any 18-year-old off the street and train him to be a good salesman in 3-weeks has obviously never sold anything. Anyone who thinks higher quality advertising copy writers come a dime for a dozon, has no idea what he’s talking about.
I’m repeating this because I watched as a CEO destroyed a multi-Billion dollar corporation. He probably had a Masters degree in finance and had never sold anything to live business-to-business consumers and in-home customers in his life.
In a further effort to reduce expenses they sent all of their artwork to be done by an agency in India. There was so much work to do and so many people there who did not have the expertise they needed, that it led to a complete breakdown of that company. They simply couldn’t function.
This CEO passed the work that should be done by an experienced sales manager to an accounting department which immediately reduce sales commissions — leading to their best salesmen and saleswomen leaving to find better paying saleswork elsewhere.
The end result was that a lot of investors trusted this man and their stock values vanished. I want nothing to do with that sort of stupidity!
I had two careers in my life. I love advertising, studied TV production, and advertising sales, for a couple of years in a small college in Boston,(mostly because I could apply that to advertising work) then worked selling advertising space for an ad agency in Boston. I did well and learned a lot.
The culture I come from is always pushing their children to continue more formal education. I matriculated into State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island, and then took my credits to Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. I completed a BS in Human Physiology and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree there. I also took night classes with a woman friend and came out with a license to practice Classic Massage
Additionally while there I took intensive studies in Nervous System physiology, and Orthopedics (broken bones, bone and joint diseases). I also taught and learned more in a Chicago massage school.
When I finally got into practice in Washington State, I continued selling to my patients explaining the differences between my practice and the practices around the community in which I was running a little clinic. The results were gratifying. I developed a full capacity schedule of patient traffic very quickly.
At age 50 I decided I needed to stop adjusting back pain paients and sold the practice, then returned to selling advertising into a big name independently published phone directory. That explains why I imagine that I understand this business.
No one understands it perfectly because it changes constantly. The marketing people continue to survey what customers want.
Customers desires and expectations change like schools of fish change direction. A few years ago the buying adults were willing to focus on an ad and stay with it.
Now, we have a new generation, taught differently, believing that their new view of history, politics, earth management, ideal world population size, and general morality is superior to what was built before they were born.
Many cannot read well and have no patience to read a book or even a longer article. They want it on video. They want it explained to them in an audio file. They want it immediately, and they want it for impossibly low prices.
The sales work I did selling advertising space in Newspapers, Magazines and a big name independent phone directory made me a better salesman and a better advertising copy writer. The only known way to become really good in advertising Copy Writing is to follow the path of selling and writing and more selling and more writing for clients. and… That is why I think I’m qualified to be of value to YOU.
I am reluctant to criticize any website or the business owner. I’ll simply ask questions.
