And they’d be able to quickly calculate that $20 a month equals a hefty $240 a year.īut $19 times 12 might be more difficult to figure out. If it were, say, $19.90, viewers would round that up to $20 anyway.
He also noted in an interview with Marketplace that it’s not easy to do simple math with $19. But that strangeness makes viewers think longer about the ad they’re watching, which, James speculates, might be why it was chosen. That still leaves us with the question: Why does $19 perform best? It’s an odd number in both senses of the word, compared to a nice, round figure like $20. And once a leader in the field does it, he said, others will follow suit. James said it’s the amount asked for because it’s the amount that yields the most successful results. “Second, this doesn’t make it easier for the donor who is deducting because if they didn’t get a receipt, they would still have to dredge up their own documentation.”Ĭharities have likely settled on this amount and continue to request it through a process akin to Darwinian natural selection. Among other things, it’s a great place to ask for the next gift and report on the previous one,” he wrote over email. “There aren’t any charities that don’t send receipts for these types of gifts. But Russell James, a professor of personal financial planning at Texas Tech University, doesn’t quite buy this explanation. A $19 contribution across 12 months amounts to $228, less than the receipt-sending threshold. One common theory links it to charities’ obligation to provide a receipt for an annual contribution of $250 or more, per Internal Revenue Service rules. How did they choose this odd seeming amount? (And I am old enough to remember the “it’s less than a cup of coffee a day” requests.)įor charities that advertise on television, 19 seems to be the magic number.ĭisabled American Veterans, Save the Children, Covenant House, No Kid Hungry and March of Dimes have released commercials calling for donations starting at $19, and often make $19 the first option on their donation sites.
#Google magic word commercial tv
Listener and reader Gretchen Hrusovsky from Ohio asked:īombarded with charity requests on the TV and they all seem to ask for $19 per month.
#Google magic word commercial series
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