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HENDEL’S HISTORY BOOK, cont.

Tempe Jaycees

I decided to join the Tempe Jaycees to make new business contacts. Most of the members hired Hendel’s for their air conditioning needs and helped promote the company. I later became the President of the Tempe Jaycees, and then State Vice President. At one Jaycee meeting I met a guest named Jerry Story who had started a publication called "Penny Saver." Jerry was looking for advertisers and offered me a discounted rate. As I looked through a sample production it seemed to me that all the ads were repetitive and boring. I thought to myself, ‘We can do better than this!’

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Joe Hendel in the Tempe Jaycees | Hendel’s Logo with Joe Sez

A Flair for Advertising Generates Results

We decided that our advertising message needed to be different. I remembered an ad that my father had in his gas station window. The faces of the countless customers who took time to read the ad had amused me. My father offered a ten-point service special. Along with the ten-point service he included a couple of free services. I would use the same basic strategy my father used.

I knew that well thought out ads would stand out. With this in mind we decided to dedicate a substantial portion of the ad space to draw people’s attention. This would improve the chance of getting them to read the ad. While growing up in St. Louis I remembered a sign in a cemetery that read, "Better to have and not need than need and not have."

I went back to Tempe Daily News to scan through pages of logos. I selected one that resembled an old fashioned professional service man. The Penny Saver magazine used the serviceman logo and inserted a balloon near his head with the words inside, "Better to have and not need than to need and not have." We labeled the ad, "Joe Sez."

In the following years countless old sayings and slogans followed. Some that we have used were: "A smile ads to your face value," "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance," and "If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right." As I look back on the old sayings that we used over the years I could see that they made a lot of sense. Some of the others were: "Haste makes waste," "Lost time is never found," "A smile adds to your face value," and "Make hay while the sun shines."

The logos stood alongside a ten-point service special, like my father had on his service station window, but we adapted them to promote the air conditioning business. Many customers said that they looked forward to seeing our ads to find what the "new" old saying would be. Over the years the idea to use part of the ad space to draw attention to our ad has been used in every advertisement our company has used in newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

The "Joe Sez" ads, modeled after the ad in my dad’s service station window, offered a 10 Point Tune-Up Special with 3 FREE Services. I figured if the window ad worked for dad a similar approach would also work for us. The "Joe Sez" ads were so successful that many of our competitors copied our ad ideas. (Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.)
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