From Craig’s List:
Farm Cats (Not pets, God help anyone who mistakes them for pets.)
Date: 2012-02-07, 8:29PM CST
Reply to: [email protected]
If you must continue flagging this ad, please at least read it first, and maybe drop me an email and just let me know why. Is it because you think I’m selling pets? I’m not selling these cats, (they’re free) and they are NOT pets. They are highly trained, elite killing machines with an insatiable lust for blood. Do not mistake them for pets! These are working farm animals…
Barn Cats –
Feral, ferocious and bloodthirsty barn cats, free to a GOOD HOME. These vicious demon spawn cats will rain down hell fire and bring genocide to all rats and mice on your property. Free, if you can catch them. Not responsible for injuries. Bring gloves, they will cut you.
Call Alex, (901) 299-xxxx
But if you take them, YOU MUST BE SWEET TO THEM. I am. I bring them each a saucer full of sweet milk every morning, and they bring me the heads of small animals (and disturbingly less small animals) to show me what will happen if I don’t.
(…If I am breaking any rules here, I’ll stop. Just communicate with me, help me understand. I’m not breeding these cats for profit, not mistreating them – they have a good home, they’re happy cats. Don’t they look happy? It’s just that my property is now free of mice and rats, there are no more squirrels, rabbits, lizards or snakes to be seen within a mile, birds don’t come anymore, and the woods around my place are now creepy and silent. They are running out of victims and starting to eyeball my goats. I’m afraid to leave my wife at home alone. We are terrified in our own house. They’re not even hungry, they just want to kill. Please help.)
**These pictures are not of the actual cats I’m advertising. The actual cats cannot be photographed. They don’t even show reflections in mirrors. And there are countless legions of them, not just four.
- Location: Holly Springs
- it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
6 Comments on “One of the best ads I've ever seen”
Hi Perry,
I wrote that ad for a friend who works with me. It was up for a few days the first time before I told him about it. I’ve run the ad before, will probably try it again at some point. It always gets lots of responses, but nobody has taken any cats yet unfortunately.
I love Craigslist. Here’s another ad I wrote today, we’ll see how long before this one gets flagged by someone with no sense of humor…
Nice to meet ya! Keep writing them edgy ads….
Feral is as feral does!
Such persuasive copywriting that if I hadn’t already had a wild one living in a heating duct for weeks a few years back, I well might have made that call. (afterall my daughter does have mice in her basement apartment at college)
My mother actually made the mistake of adopting two barn cats once. They were just so adorable she thought she could tame them. She was wrong. After they destroyed her living room, she gave them to her sister who lived on a farm with a big barn full of rats.
Now that’s excellent marketing! I had to literally Laugh Out Loud when I read it.
If he was selling the cats, he’d have a buyer in no time. Since he’s giving them away for free, the cats are probably already gone to the next farmyard filled with unsuspecting rats and mice.
LOL
Absolutely BRILLIANT ad.
Sounds like it can spin off into a movie too, haha
Ronnie