a CL Honr k ins A- Digitized by the Internet Archive — in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/scientificadvertO000hopk Anz 0 OChe. This book should be returned/renewed by the latest date shown above. Overdue items incur charges which prevent self-service renewals. Please contact the library. Wandsworth Libraries catty, 24 hour Renewal Hotline a 01159 293388 ‘ ‘ www.wandsworth.gov.uk Wandsworth L.749A (rev.11.2004) 9030 0000 253373 STAMMAIAAIAAT Scientific Advertising Claude C. Hopkins All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Cover Design: J.Neuman © Copyright — Claude C. Hopkins © Copyright 2009 — SB Publishing www.snowballpublishing.com [email protected] ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact BN Publishing at [email protected] Contents How Advertising Laws Are Established Just Salesmanship Offer Service Mail Order Advertising—What It Teaches Headlines Psychology Being Specific 8 Tell Your Full Story 2 Art in Advertising 10 Things Too Costly 11 Information 12 Strategy 13 Use of Samples 14 Getting Distribution 15 Test Campaigns 16 Leaning on Dealers 17 Individuality Contents 18 Negative Advertising 55 19 Letter Writing 57 20 A Name That Helps 60 21 Good Business 62 vi Chapter 1 How Advertising Laws Are Established The time has come when advertising has in some hands reached the status of a science. It is based on fixed principles and is reasonably exact. The causes and effects have been analyzed until they are well understood. The correct methods of procedure have been proved and established. We know what is most effective, and we act on basic laws. Advertising, once a gamble, has thus become, under able Ateeetten, one of the safest of business ventures. Certainly no other enterprise with comparable possibilities need invoive so little risk. Therefore this book deals, not with theories and opinions, but with well-proved principles and facts. It is written as a text book for students and a safe guide for advertisers. Every statement has been weighed. The book is confined to established fundamentals. If we enter any realms of uncertainty we shall carefully denote them. The present status of advertising is due to many reasons. Much na- tional advertising has long been handled by large organizations known as advertising agencies. Some of these agencies, in their hundreds of campaigns, have tested and compared thousands of plans and ideas. The results have been watched and recorded, so no lessons have been lost. Such agencies employ a high grade of talent. None but able and experienced men can meet the requirements in national advertising. Working in co-operation, learning from each other and from each new undertaking, some of these men develop into masters. Individuals may come and go, but they leave their records and ideas behind them. These become a part of the organization’s equipment, and a guide to all who follow. Thus, in the course of decades, such agencies become storehouses of advertising experiences, proved principles, and methods. How Advertising Laws Are Established The larger agencies also come into intimate contact with experts in every department of business. Their clients are usually dominating concerns. So they see the results of countless methods and policies. They become a clearing house for everything pertaining to merchandis- ing. Nearly every selling question which arises in business is accurately answered by many experiences. Under these conditions, where they long exist, advertising and mer- chandising become exact sciences. Every course is charted. The compass of accurate knowledge directs the shortest, safest, cheapest course to any destination. We learn the principles and prove them by repeated tests. This is done through keyed advertising, by traced returns, largely by the use of coupons. We compare one way with many others, backward and forward, and record the results. When one method invariably proves best, that method becomes a fixed principle. Mail order advertising is traced down to the fraction of a penny. The cost per reply and cost per dollar of sale show up with utter exactness. One ad is compared with another, one method with another. Headlines, settings, sizes, arguments and pictures are compared. To reduce the cost of results even one per cent means much in some mail order advertising. So no guesswork is permitted. One must know what is best. Thus mail order advertising first established many of our basic laws. In lines where direct returns are impossible we compare one town with another. Scores of methods may be compared in this way, measured by cost of sales. But the most common way is by use of the coupon. We offer a sample, a book, a free package or something to induce direct replies. Thus we learn the amount of action which each ad engenders. But those figures are not final. One ad may bring too many worthless replies, another replies that are valuable. So our final conclusions are always based on cost per customer or cost per dollar of sale. These coupon plans are dealt with further in the chapter on “Test Campaigns.” Here we explain only how we employ them to discover advertising principles. In a large agency coupon returns are watched and recorded on hun- dreds of different lines. In a single line they are sometimes recorded on thousands of separate ads. Thus we test everything pertaining to advertising. We answer nearly every possible question by multitudinous traced returns.