#162: Avon – Ding Dong Avon Calling

The Empire Builders Podcast

David McConnell ditched his door to door book selling gig to pursue the bribe that he we giving for attention.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the Not-So-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[Travis Crawford HVAC Ad]

Stephen Semple:

Ding dong. What makes you think of when the doorbell rings, what ad? Ding dong.

Dave Young:

Ding dong. Well, I was expecting a topic, first of all.

Stephen Semple:

Okay, well work with me here. What do you recall?

Dave Young:

Shoot, in the last five years, just chasing people away from my front porch.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, okay.

Dave Young:

Avon calling.

Stephen Semple:

There you go. Avon calling. That’s who we’re going to talk about.

Dave Young:

Yeah, I don’t think they’re doing that anymore.

Stephen Semple:

No, they aren’t. But that recall is really, really interesting from the fact that you were able to remember those ads. Because those ads have not run, they stopped running in the late sixties. We were like…

Dave Young:

Oh my gosh.

Stephen Semple:

We were really young when those ads stopped, and yet you were still able to recall it.

Dave Young:

And I’m probably recalling it as a persistent meme in our culture that Avon calling, it became, not, it was woven into probably movies and TV and mass culture, so that for the next decade or decade and a half, it was still echoing, right?

Stephen Semple:

Correct.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Stephen Semple:

So think about how powerful that was. We’re going to talk about Origin, a little bit about Avon.

Dave Young:

I think that’s a fascinating phenomenon. I’m anxious to hear the Avon story. It reminds me of cigarette jingles as well that ended when they banned cigarette advertising in the mid-seventies. Yet for the next 20, 30 years, I mean, anybody that was alive then could still tell you Winston tastes good like a cigarette should, right? There’s so many of those. So yeah, they just become a part of us.

Stephen Semple:

And they’re powerful enough that they’re, as you said, spoofing them on Simpsons and things along that lines. But back to Avon. So Avon’s a really old company. It was founded in 1886 by David McConnell, and today, it’s still around today. They do 9 billion in sales, they have 23,000 employees. There’s over 6 million representatives of Avon, and it’s still privately held by Natura Holdings out of Brazil. And they’re giving you an idea, there are four Avon lipsticks sold every second.

Dave Young:

Dang, that’s a lot of lipstick.

Stephen Semple:

Boom four, boom four, boom four. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that amazing? Avon’s founder, David McConnell, started in sales back in the 1880s as a door to door book salesman. And so we’ve heard this happen with other businesses because he then used a popular gimmick. Remember Wrigley’s? Remember how Wrigley’s didn’t start by selling gum? The gum was the free giveaway? McConnell offered a free gift in exchange for a moment of the customer’s time. So it was a gift with appointment. And guess what he gave away? Perfume.

Dave Young:

Oh, okay.

Stephen Semple:

Most of the customers McConnell dealt with were housewives who were home in the afternoon hours while their husband was away at work. And so he decided to work with a local pharmacy to create a fragrance that he could give away, little quantities for anybody who was willing to listen to the book pitch. But a funny thing happened, they were way more interested in the perfume than the books. So just like Wrigley, who ditched baking powder for the gum, he ditched the books for the perfume. Here’s the funny thing. He was based in New York in 1886, and he launched a line of fragrances under the name The California Perfume Company.

Dave Young:

All right.

Stephen Semple:

But he was in New York.

Dave Young:

Yeah, but California baby. Come on.

Stephen Semple:

California baby, that’s it. And it was in 1928 that the company started calling itself Avon. And it was actually named after Strafford on the Avon, the birthplace, a McConnell’s favorite playwright. And also remember, he was a door-to-door book seller, so he loved books. And the door to door formula for sale, especially perfume sales was really ideal for the time period. And McConnell would go from small town to small town, neighboring states, and there were stuck at home women who also had no means of traveling the shops that might carry such products. Remember, this was late 1800s. People didn’t have cars and things along that lines, so it was also this really great convenience. But the modern Avon was really born when he hired his first female sales rep. It was Purses Foster Emelies Albine who was a wife and a mother of two. And at 50, she was 50 years old when he hired her, she would travel by buggy and train doing door to door sales all around the northeast.

Dave Young:

Wait, say her name again.

Stephen Semple:

Purses Foster Eames Albine.

Dave Young:

That’s what I thought you said. Okay.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a mouthful.

Dave Young:

It’s a mouthful.

Stephen Semple:

And she’s really the one who created the model for how the company sold its products. She convinced McConnell that the best way to market his products to women was to hire women to sell them. It’s an obvious idea today, but someone had to take the first leap, right?

Dave Young:

Sure, sure.

Stephen Semple:

And Albine soon began training a fleet of female salespeople to do this, and the Avon lady was born.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

[Empire Builders Ad]

Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story of where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Semple:

1887, just one year into the perfume business, McConnell, thanks to L.B recruits 12 female reps, and he’s got an 18 piece fragrance line. In 1905, the company launches Outlook Magazine, which is publication for sharing advice to employees and keeping representatives up to date. And then the following year, Avon has enough products because they now branched out products to create a catalog. 1906, so that’s basically nine years after starting, they do their first print advertisement, and they do it in Good Housekeeping Magazine. A number of years later, Good Housekeeping gives them their seal of approval, but the time they launch an ad in Good Housekeeping. And in 19 31, 11 Avon products get the good Housekeeping seal of approval, which is record breaking. By the time the 1950s comes around, this is when Avon launched its, “ding-dong, Avon calling” ad campaign. The campaign ran from 1954 to 1967. The thing I find remarkable is I feel like I knew the whole ding-dong thing. It ended when I was three years old, and they ran it for like 13 years. And again, why did they stop? That’s the mystery to me. Why did they stop?

Dave Young:

That’s a good question. Did you find out?

Stephen Semple:

Again, I think it’s like a lot of the things that we actually ironically spoke about just in the last episode, unlike beer, where I think the advertiser grows tired of it ahead of time, or they feel has gotten tired, or who knows what. Because the interesting thing, they did not change their sales process. It was still door to door sales being done by women.

Dave Young:

You want my wild ass guess?

Stephen Semple:

Let’s hear your wild ass guess.

Dave Young:

Air conditioning.

Stephen Semple:

Air conditioning.

Dave Young:

If you’re knocking on a door and the house doesn’t have air conditioning in the summertime, there’s just going to be a screen door. And if you ring the doorbell and yell, “Avon calling,” somebody inside’s going to hear you. If you have air conditioning, yelling outside a closed door isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good. That’s just a guess. It’s a wild, but there has to be, it could have been the migration to the suburbs. There’s something, they either just got tired of the campaign or there was some cultural changes going on that made it less easy to do the doorbell and the shout. But I think they gave up too early.

Stephen Semple:

I think they gave up too early. And not only that, “ding-dong, Avon calling”, I could see that happening where it was a literal thing that happened that went away, but it would still work even if no one says it.

Dave Young:

Yes. Because that’s the funny part about it, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Once they’ve been doing it for 13, 15 years, however long they did it, those are the two words that pop into your head anytime you hear your doorbell ring, it’s a reticular activator.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

It’s a recall cue that automatically pulls in the two words “Avon calling”. So that’s the biggest mistake in abandoning it.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, yeah. Because look, it was deeply entrenched with very high recall. And as you said, anytime you heard a doorbell ring, the brain recalled that, which meant the repetition they were getting on that campaign was just absolutely phenomenal. No, they should never have abandoned that campaign. Should never have abandoned. But here’s the interesting thing that I thought. So first of all, what we know is door-to-door sales is tougher today. But there was a time where going door-to-door was actually a convenience because people were home, like you had housewives at home, they didn’t have easy transportation. So the ability to buy something from somebody who was coming to the home, door-to-door sales was a really smart distribution methodology. But the part that I like that Avon did, it would be easy to lose sight of, is David McConnell recognized people were more interested in the perfume than the books.

Dave Young:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Semple:

And how many times do we see things where working with a customer and something is selling well, and the customer’s demanding it, and people go, “Yeah, but that’s not what we do. I’m not in the perfume business. I’m in the book business.”

Dave Young:

Yeah. Why won’t you buy one of my books? Well, why don’t you give me another vial of perfume?

Stephen Semple:

We need to create a better thing to help us sell books. Rather than going, “Huh, maybe we should be selling perfume.” And I found it really interesting that Wrigley went through the same thing.

Dave Young:

It just occurred to me that the way society shifted, it’s not that I don’t want people coming to my door today in 2024, it’s that I want it pre-arranged.

Stephen Semple:

Right.

Dave Young:

I want to know that they’re coming because I ordered something on DoorDash or from Amazon, and they’ve told me they’re going to be here at eight o’clock.

Stephen Semple:

Today, we don’t want the unsolicited door knock.

Dave Young:

Yeah. I raised kids that are in their thirties now that won’t answer the door. They won’t answer the phone. It’s been fun just studying, thinking about culture and society and how things change as we dig back into these brands.

Stephen Semple:

And we often talk about word of mouth, and when people refer to word of mouth, they tend to put it just in one category, which is that, “Hey, I got a buddy who can take care of your air conditioning. But Avon is a great example where word of mouth, when you create something iconic, becomes far greater than that. Because as we both experienced, there’s no way that we remember those ads because of seeing those ads. We remember it because of the iconic resonating, where it appeared in so many other places.

Dave Young:

Yeah. This story, you could dive into the science of sensory application in this story. The recall cue is a doorbell. So it’s an auditory thing, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

And the product that people were desiring was an olfactory. It was perfume, it was something that you smelled. And so you put that perfume on, and if people like it, they’re like, “Oh, Mary, you smell lovely today. What’s that scent that you’re wearing?” Right? They probably didn’t say it that way because your name’s not Mary, but you know what I’m saying, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yes. It’s a product that you see somebody chewing gum. You’re like, “What are you eating?” “No, I’m chewing gum.” “What’s gum?” “It’s a new thing.” “Oh, you smell different than you usually do. What’s with that?” “Oh, well, this guy that was selling books gave me this.”

Yes. And then you think about the brilliance of then tying a campaign to something that, let’s face it, in those days, the doorbell rang every day with a neighbor or milk delivery or whatever, and then the doorbell rings, and you have that recall queue. I was just on YouTube because I wanted to see whether there was old Avon ads on YouTube. And there is, but talking about cultural references, Dave, Edward Scissorhands, which was basically a movie from 12 years ago, had a whole scene in it with the Avon lady calling. So as recent as a decade ago, it was still being used in popular culture.

Dave Young:

Sure, yeah. That’s the power.

Stephen Semple:

How crazy is that? How crazy is that?

Dave Young:

When they gave it up, they didn’t know how powerful they’d become.

Stephen Semple:

It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. You know what? If I was doing work with Avon today, I’d be like, “Let’s revive that campaign,” especially where we love retro things right now. I’d be totally doing that. Totally doing that. So if you work for Avon, give us a telephone call and we’ll set up a campaign for you.

Dave Young:

Sounds great. Thanks for sharing this story, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:

All right, thanks David.

Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat juicy five star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions at TheEmpireBuildersPodcast.com.