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Claude C. Hopkins
You may or you may not have heard of the book Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. If you have ever read it it will have changed the way you think about advertising forever. It’s author was Claude C. Hopkins (1866-1932) who was one of the great advertising pioneers of his or any age. He believed advertising existed only to sell something and should be measurable and justify the results that it produced.
He worked for various advertisers, including Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company, Swift & Company and Dr. Shoop’s patent medicine company until. At the age of 41, he was hired by Albert Lasker owner of Lord & Thomas advertising in 1907 at a salary of $185,000 a year, Hopkins insisted copywriters researched their client products and produce reason-why copy. He believed, that a good product was often its own best salesperson and as such he was a great believer in sampling.
To track the results of his advertising he used key coded coupons and then tested headlines, offers and propositions against one another. He used the analysis of these measurements to continually improve his ad results, driving responses and the cost effectiveness of his clients advertising spend.
He retired in 1923 from Lord & Thomas, where he finished his career as president and chairman. Later that year he published Scientific Advertising which is cited by many of advertising and marketing personalities (such as David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham) as a “must-read” book.
In the book, Hopkins outlines an advertising approach based on testing and measuring. In this way losses from unsuccessful ads are kept to a safe level while gains from profitable ads are multiplied. Or, as Hopkins wrote, the advertiser is “playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot”.
As a little new year gift to you, I have a link to a site where you can see or download the whole book for free.
http://www.meta-morph.co.uk/meta/images/pdfs/Scientific_Advertising.pdf
Enjoy it, keep it but above all use it’s ideas in your advertising from now on.
The Ideal Marketing Company supports Leicestershire and Northamptonshire companies as well as companies from across the UK with marketing, PR and direct mail. The Ideal Marketing Company helps support companies with marketing consultancy in order to generate new business wins as well as making the most of existing customers.
