To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

by Daniel H. Pink

Finding Your Frames Rosser Reeves, an American advertising executive from the middle of the twentieth century, has three claims to fame. First, he coined the term “unique selling proposition,” the idea that any product or service in the marketplace has to specify what differentiates it from its competitors. Second, he was among the first ad men to produce television spots for American presidential campaigns—including a 1952 ad for Dwight D. Eisenhower that included the singing refrain “I like Ike” (a forerunner of the rhyming pitch we’ll discuss in Chapter 7). Third, Reeves is the protagonist in one of the most famous stories in advertising, one that exemplifies the enduring power of clarity. The precise details of the story are somewhat in doubt. As it’s been retold over the past fifty years, the particulars often change. But the broad contours of the tale go something like this: One afternoon, Reeves and a colleague were having lunch in Central Park. On the way back to their Madison Avenue office, they encountered a man sitting in the park, begging for money. He had a cup for donations and beside it was a sign, handwritten on cardboard, that read: I AM BLIND. Unfortunately for the man, the cup contained only a few coins. His attempts to move others to donate money were coming up short. Reeves thought he knew why. He told his colleague something to the effect of: “I bet I can dramatically increase the amount of money that guy is raising simply by adding four words to his ...