A steering-gear maker stopped advertising steering gears and started advertising trucks

the problem

A component maker needed to win over three different audiences at once -- the manufacturer who chooses the part, the dealer who doesn't care about the part, and the buyer who's thinking about the truck, not the gear inside it -- and advertising the part itself could only ever reach one of them

background

what everyone would do

Advertise the steering gear's own specific virtues directly to truck manufacturers -- the standard playbook for a parts or accessory maker, which had a real chance of moving the manufacturer who chose components, but no way to reach the dealer who only cared about selling finished trucks or the buyer who was thinking about a truck, not a gear.

what they saw

Ross saw that its own component advertising could only ever reach one of the three audiences whose combined interest actually determined its sales -- manufacturer, dealer, buyer -- because only the manufacturer had any reason to care about steering-gear brand specifically. Since Ross profited whenever more trucks got built and bought at all, regardless of whose gear ended up inside, advertising demand for the truck category itself was the one message that could reach all three audiences simultaneously, something no product-specific pitch could do.

the move

Starting in February 1919, Ross's national advertising campaign advertised the motor truck industry as a whole rather than Ross's own product -- copy built around boosting truck adoption generally, tied explicitly to the contemporary 'Ship by Truck' movement, with headlines like 'Better Transportation -- the Nation's Vital Need.' The reasoning, stated directly in the campaign's own account: since Ross profits whenever more trucks get built and bought regardless of whose steering gear is inside them, building demand for trucks in general served the manufacturer, the dealer and the buyer all at once, where narrow component advertising could only ever reach one. Every ad still carried an X-ray illustration of the Ross gear, placed diagonally across the page, to counter the public's assumption that a steering gear is a trivially simple part -- building respect for the component without making it the message's subject -- and pointed readers to a free booklet, 'Choosing a Motor Truck,' which only then pivoted into Ross's specific advantages once a prospect had opted in. A four-page house organ, 'Rossgear,' supplemented the national push specifically to reach dealers.

why it works

By making every ad's main copy about the value of motor trucks generally rather than Ross equipment specifically, the campaign appealed to manufacturers (who benefit from more trucks selling), dealers (who only care about truck demand, not parts brands) and buyers (who were the actual target of 'buy a truck' messaging) all through the same piece of copy, while a small, consistent visual cue -- the X-ray illustration of the Ross gear -- kept the company's own product quietly present without making it the message's subject. Because interested readers could still opt into product-specific detail through the 'Choosing a Motor Truck' booklet, Ross didn't sacrifice its ability to make its own case to genuinely interested manufacturers, it simply moved that case to a second step reached only by people the category-level ad had already engaged.

the payoff

Of the 135 possible truck-manufacturer purchasers remaining on Ross's prospect list before the campaign began, over fifty had adopted Ross equipment within about a year and a few months of national advertising -- and the trade account reporting the results did not overclaim: 'all the credit for this gain cannot be ascribed to the use of Printers' Ink. Aggressive sales efforts played their part.'

where it breaks

This approach only works when growing the overall category genuinely benefits the advertiser regardless of which competitor wins any given sale -- a company facing intense, zero-sum competition within the category, where a rival's product is just as likely to capture the growth as its own, gets much less certain payoff from category-building spend than Ross did as an already-substantial incumbent supplier. It also depends on having some other channel (a booklet, a house organ, an X-ray illustration) to still carry product-specific differentiation to the audience that actually does care about it, since pure category advertising alone risks building demand a competitor's product ends up capturing instead.

what came after

Ross Gear & Tool continued as a major steering-gear supplier for decades afterward, equipping over 70 types of US military vehicles including every half-track built during World War II, and the company survived through a 1964 acquisition by TRW and a 2015 transition to ZF -- a durable business built in part on this early example of a B2B component supplier advertising category demand rather than product features to reach audiences its own product message couldn't.

references

1. [1]A Parts Manufacturer Advertises the Whole Product: And the Ross Gear Company Is Doing It for Good, Sound ReasonsPrinters' Ink, vol. 113, no. 5 (dateline Nov. 4, 1920 per the printed page; the Internet Archive's own catalog metadata misdates this issue as 1929), 1920archive.org
2. [2]Ross Gear and Tool in World War TwoThe American Automobile Industry in World War Two (David D. Jackson), 2023usautoindustryworldwartwo.com

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