“Adapting Selling Talk to Circumstances: An Interview with John Anderson” from the March 18th 1916 issue of Music Trade Indicator is a front page article that discusses John Anderson’s advertising strategies and his subsequent success as a salesman. The article tells anecdotes about various customers of the Everett piano company, and how John Anderson catered his salesmanship to suit their life experience. Throughout the article Anderson convinces a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a ship captain, and a minister to buy from the Everett piano company. Sounds like a dirty joke, right? (A lawyer, a doctor, and a minister walk into a piano store….)
My two favorite anecdotes are the farmer and the minister. The farmer complains that while the Everett piano only has two pedals, he is able to buy a cheaper piano with a three pedals down the road. Why should he buy here? Anderson replies, “ ‘Well, I suppose you always buy cows with three horns?... I suppose every horse you buy has five legs, and that you wouldn’t have a rooster on the farm unless he had three or four well spurred legs.”[1] When the farmer finally bought an Everett piano, the anonymous magazine writer concludes, “The farmer bought that piano because he had been told about it in a way that was easily understandable to the farmer.”[2]
In the case of the minister, the reverend was doubtful of the Everett piano because of what other salesmen on Boyleston Street had told him. It did not seem in compliance with Anderson’s praise of the Everett piano. Anderson rebutted, “Haven’t you ministers been telling us about heaven and hell for years and years? Do any of you know anything about it? Have any of you ever been there?”[3] Inexplicably this argument convinces the minister of the Everett’s superiority.
What impresses me about this article is the way in which John Anderson is not just presented as an authority on pianos, but an authority on life. He sizes up his customers and understands their deep inner-workings, so much so that he can connect their identities with their desire for the best piano imaginable, which in this case is the Everett piano. A doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a ship captain, and a minister are all authorities in their own right. Within a parable, they would symbolize different components of wisdom. Yet John Anderson, a mere piano designer and salesman, sees through all of them. He sees through them, unmasks them as servants of the petty worldly wishes, while he is the servant of something much greater. Art. No wonder his argument is so convincing. Who wouldn’t want to be as enlightened? And to think that this enlightenment is represented by the piano in your living room!
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