Notes on ‘Scientific Advertising’ by Claude C. Hopkins (1923)
Read in Apr 2023
This book proves that Performance Marketing (including concepts like ROAS, ad reach, headline testing, pricing, intent matching, customer-centricity, tracking, etc.) is over 100 years old!
It also reveals how the black and white contrast between an old world of “Mad Men”-like purely creative advertisers and a new world of “data-driven” modern marketers is a false narrative.
And it also confirms how advertisers and marketers have always had a better understanding of human nature compared to a lot of policy makers, sociologists, and many popular “intellectuals”.
Many points anticipate observations that Behavioral Economics will put forward decades later.
Overall, a must-read for all advertisers and marketers. The examples and analyses might seem outdated at first glance, but it’s not true – the tools and the contexts have changed in the meantime, but the underlying mindset and approach remain absolutely relevant.
***
Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising.
***
The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. Often they do not quote a price. They do not say that dealers handle the product. The ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information.
***
The maker of an advertised article knows the manufacturing side and probably the dealers side. But this very knowledge often leads him astray in respect to customers. His interests are not in their interests. The advertising man studies the consumer. He tries to place himself in the position of the buyer. His success largely depends on doing that to the exclusion of everything else.
This book will contain no more important chapter than this one on salesmanship. The reason for most of the non-successes in advertising is trying to sell people what they do not want. But next to that comes lack of true salesmanship.
Ads are planned and written with some utterly wrong conception. They are written to please the seller. The interest of the buyer are forgotten. One can never sell goods profitably, in person or in print, when that attitude exists.
***
These are all common principles of salesmanship. The most ignorant peddler applies them. Yet the salesman-in-print very often forgets them. He talks about his interest. He blazons a name, as though that was of importance. His phrase is, “Drive people to the stores,” and that is his attitude in everything he says. People can be coaxed but not driven. Whatever they do they do to please themselves. Many fewer mistakes would be made in advertising if these facts were never forgotten.
