“Own A Rumor!”

We never did too much actual advertising for Mosaic Records. They’d done quite a bit before Fred/Alan got involved with the company and it didn’t really pay off for them. Besides, our catalogs were growing their business pretty well organically. So, it was pretty hard to convince them to spend their hard earned money to experiment a little. 

Our strategy was pretty simple. The New York Times was the print medium that got them the most new orders in the world. And, NYT also got a lot of lift for other, quality direct response products. 

Marty Pekar was the only advertising copywriter Mosaic trusted other than Alan. And besides being a recorded music fanatic, he had a good knack with direct response ads. (There’s a real skill. Each word counts towards convincing someone to actually order, and if it doesn’t… get rid of it. Seriously.) 

The advertising worked really well. Though the exact number of orders generated has been lost to the sands of time, we can report that every placement was profitable for Mosaic Records, and added hundreds of regular customers to their catalog mailing lists. 

And, of course, thousands more people heard the clandestine, historical Dean Benedetti recordings of Charlie Parker, now a rumor come alive.

Fred/Alan buys the New York Times.

Fred/Alan didn’t do too much advertising for itself (it was expensive), so we tried to make every one count.

The New York Times was, by far, the most influential publication in advertising. In the 1980s Phil Dougherty had a repuation as the most honest, authoritative columnist in the business, and any ad in the Times would guarantee sales for your client.   Well, why shouldn’t we be our own client, and use the Times to generate new business leads? We could buy remnant space at will for less than half price, our current clients would feel like they were with a pretty together agency, and businesses outside New York would take notice and call.   Did it work? You bet.