miniature tales
By Frank Lupton
The Rule of the Threes
I
n the early 1990s, as a marketing director for a major veterinary pharmaceutical
company, I traveled a lot. This particular
day, I was at Chicago’s O’Hare embarking
on yet another trip and was at a newsstand
browsing for something to read on the flight.
Suddenly two male voices broke into my consciousness as they rose above the din of the
masses passing by. One voice said, “Felix,
funds are going to be limited, so what is your
best advice oh how to get the most for my
marketing money.” A second voice that I assumed was Felix replied, “Just remember the
rule of the threes and you won’t go wrong.”
As soon as my brain registered on what I
had heard, I spun around to see the backs
of two well dressed gentlemen rapidly walking away from my position. In what seemed
but a mere second they were engulfed by the
hoards of travelers and were gone.
The rule of the threes, I had never heard of
such a thing. Having taken over fifty hours
of post graduate higher education in business
and marketing from places such as Northwestern, Perdue, Wharton and Syracuse, one
might expect that I would have stumbled
across any and all rules that might exist. I
suddenly felt as though I had somehow failed
in my pursuit of knowledge. I decided then
and there that I had to find out about this
rule.
For the next several years of my career, I asked
every faculty member of whatever university
I had contact with and every peer from the
business world if they had heard of such a
rule. For my efforts, I received nothing by
quizzical looks that added to my mounting
feelings of utter frustration. As time passed,
this incident and my efforts to find this rule
began to fade as life’s requirements took my
full concentration.
About six months before I took early retirement in 1997, I attended a by invitation only
seminar at Northwestern hosted by a visiting
66 Miniature Horse World
O ctober / N o v ember 2 0 1 5
South Korean
professor. I was
half expecting this to
be a waste of time, but my
boss wanted me to go and since they
had paid for it, I wasn’t about to make waves.
From the moment this gentleman uttered
his first words I was absolutely riveted. He
spoke English better than most native Americans. He was obviously brilliant. He was
a charismatic speaker and my concentration
was at an all time high. For some reason the
rule of the threes popped into my head and
I decided that if I had the chance, I would
ask him if he had ever heard of such a thing.
As soon as the chance for questions arose
many hands flew into the air in unison. I was
not the first to be recognized, or the second
or third. That was okay because the third
person to speak solved my problem. Her
question, if I remember correctly, was something like this. With all of the new internet
technology, enabling us to reach so many in
such a short time, do you think print advertising has any remaining value at all? I will
never forget his answer and, although I will
not put quote marks around what follows,
this is very close to verbatim.
There are three things you must remember
at all times. The first is that a person must
see and comprehend an ad three times for
the message to be remembered by the brain.
The second is that when a person has access
to a magazine in the home or their place of
business, they pick it up and look at it an
average
of
three
different times. The
third and final thing you must remember is
that, on average, 3.2 different people read
each copy of a magazine or journal.
I will never know whether what I learned
that day relates in any way to what I overheard in the airport. Most likely, it does not.
When I left that seminar, however, I knew
the mystery was solved. I had my own personal rule of the threes.
In our modern world of instant connection,
we have become too enamored with the ease
of mass email, texting and the social media.
To be sure these can all be valuable parts of
an integrated promotional plan. For us, our
website is our number one selling tool. It
is our ads in the World magazine that drive
people to our website. Hard copy has staying power beyond all other media. If you
doubt this, do a little test. The next time
you get a mass email announcing the latest
online sale, go and find your latest copy of
the World and set it next to your computer
screen. Now take your mouse, move your
cursor