Whatever Works: Where Product is King

What to advertise was the next question. “I’m not a fan of catalog request ads,” Brown says. “I want orders.” So they tested a toe-straightener for people with hammer toes—roughly 25 percent of the population. Photography wouldn’t work, so a drawing was commissioned. When their employees saw the drawing and the ad Larry had written and designed, they said, “You can’t run that!” The foot depicted in the ad had six toes.