Ralph Ginzburg: Provocateur In Print

I believe this display ad was the swan song for the provocative promoter in print, Ralph Ginzburg.

Before Boardroom came on the scene, Ginzburg was the king of the soft offer, making the bulk of his money from selling his huge list of respondents to virtually anyone who would buy it — a pre-Internet, direct mail spammer, if you will.

Ginzburg's offers and style of copy were designed to catch as many prospects as possible in his long net. Like most of Ginzburg's work, this 1980 ad had an unabashed approach to pull male respondents.

Besides Ginzburg's trademark fascinations, like: "Austria offers 'Swiss' Bank Accounts,"
"Hilton Stock: Worth Checking Into," "Tax Havens: A Global Guide" and "Arson For Profit Rages," it's worth noticing how he squeezes the titles of a few dozen officers from major corporations as a Who's Who for his publication, American Business.

It's likely the President of United Airlines wouldn't have wanted his name uttered in the same sentence as Ralph Ginzburg's in 1980. It's also likely that he wasn't a contributor to the publication, but rather he was merely quoted in the "editorial symposia."

Nevertheless, it's a devilishly clever (yet potentially litigious) technique for credentialing his publication.

The offer in the coupon provides the final chuckle.

$9.95 for a LIFETIME subscription. Repeat: This subscription lasts — amazingly — for the entire rest of my natural lifetime and is a BARGAIN WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN PUBLISHING HISTORY.

Ralph Ginzburg's Darling