Word: baits
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fantastic price of only $18 . . . Call now!" Over the air from many another radio and TV station around the U.S., other excited announcers offered similar "bargains"-which almost always turned out to be fakes. To admen and reputable retailers, this popular form of electronic huckstering is known as "bait advertising." Says Denver's Better Business Bureau Director Dan Bell: "The greatest single cause of consumer distrust of advertising today is the widespread use of bait tactics . . . It has been termed a national scandal in business...
...reached such proportions that Congress is considering an investigation of the hucksters who promise phony bargains over the air. Last week in Los Angeles, seven shady TV pitchmen were charged with fraud. In New York, Attorney General Jacob Javits asked the state legislature for power to ask injunctions against bait advertisers...
Selling by Underselling. Though the bait advertisers' products differ, their methods are the same. Each offers an item at a ridiculously low price as a come-on, to get into the prospect's home or get the housewife into his store. Then the salesman tries to switch the prospect to a high-priced model. For example, in Cleveland last week, a housewife answered a TV ad for "a brand-new Free-Westinghouse* sewing machine for $50." When the friendly salesman turned on the machine, it made so much racket she thought it would scare her children. When...
...Since bait advertisers calculate that one housewife in three will buy the high-priced model, the pattern is repeated daily in thousands of U.S. homes. In Seattle, vacuum cleaners are popular bait. Radio station KOL advertised a rebuilt vacuum cleaner for $8.95, but a demonstration showed that it lacked the suction to extinguish a match, and the salesman switched to a $120 cleaner...
...identifies a "mystery tune" (usually something as well known as The Star-Spangled Banner) receives a coupon to buy "a $14 photograph" for $1. At the studio the prospect is pressured into buying a frame ($2.95 extra), tinting ($6 extra), and perhaps a whole set of pictures. In Chicago, bait advertisers plug a food-freezer plan. By buying in large quantities from a "co-op," the prospect supposedly saves enough to pay off the cost of a freezer. But, says Chicago's Better Business Bureau: "The savings to the consumer through the food-freezer plans are no greater than...