Picture, therefore, the hundreds of cases such as this: Tony Pasquale buys an old car for $50. He wants the big “hack” just to drive to and from his girl’s house. He drives into a gasoline station. He has two dollars, his best girl, and a twenty-gallon tank . The attendant s ays, “Shall I fill it up?” Tony is embarrassed. He tells the attendant to go ahead, but he slyly puts three fingers over the side of the car to indicate that is all he wants. “Shall I fill it up?” needs revision. In fact, our recent changes of the expr ession indicate that the new “gasoline approach” we are developing will prove even more effective than the famous old one that has sold a million gallons of gasoline. “How About Some Oil?” The “how -about-some- oil” salesman sells little oil. He annoys you with his, “Shall I check your oil?” He is one of the high -pressure salesmen we are trying to convert. Mr. H. W. Dodge, vice president of the Texas Company, called me to his offices in the Chrysler Building one day. He explained that the New Texas Oil would be put on the market soon, and that his 45,000 dealers needed something definite to say to motorists to introduce this new oil. Mr Dodge realized that his best product will pass unnoticed before the eyes of the public unless certain words are used to describe it effectively and dramatically. Therefore, a study was made of the habits of American motorists. It was found that they had a habit, born during the depression, of saying “No” before thinking. Ask them if they needed any oil, and they’d say “No.” Ask them if they had seen the New Texaco Oil, and they’d say, “No – not interested – just five gallons of gasoline, please.” Out of a hundred methods of approaching motorists at the pumps while they were getting gasoline, to sell them the New Texaco Oil, this statement proved best (perhaps it was used on you): “Is your oil at proper driving level?” These seven little words were used by 45,000 Texaco dealers in one week on a total of nearly 485,000 motorists. It helped the dealers get under a quarter of a million hoods. It exposed these Texaco dealers to a potential quarter of a million sales of the new oil in one week. It was a ten-second attention-getter that succeeded 58 per cent of the time, because it capitalized on the word “NO”! It invited a ”NO” – for in this case “NO” meant “YES”! The fear appeal again.
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