“Scientific Advertising” Chapter 1: How Advertising Laws Are Established
We’ve decided to dedicate the next two weeks of blogging to one of the most essential advertising books ever written for students and marketers everywhere. The book we’ll be talking about is called “Scientific advertising” and written by Claude C Hopkins in 1923.
You might wonder what we’re doing analysing and summarizing a relatively ancient book, but rest assured that it remains to be a must-read for anyone in the marketing industry even until this day. Either you’re a marketer yourself, or just delving into the world of advertising or maybe you’re trying to improve your business strategies – whatever your intentions are “Scientific Advertising” is something that should be etched in the corners of your marketing mind as an anchor for success.
Enjoy and comment away! Let’s have an open discussion on this matter.
Chapter 1 – How advertising laws are established
Advertising is now more like an exact science rather than a gamble.
With time, advertising agencies have been recording measurements on various advertising campaigns, so there is already a substantial collection of tried and measured techniques that no longer need to be applied at random. The best outcomes are based on fixed principles.
Marketers should be applying working principles like research and sales data to advertising campaigns, and not just theories without proof.
Hopkins writes “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 percent 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.”
Direct marketing, like mail order, is when a marketer sells to an individual directly – to his email address or home rather than a mass marketing campaign like a viral video or ad commercial.
The intro to “Scientific Advertising” discuss this form of marketing, and we already know that mail order marketers use things like Cost Per Acquisition, Cost Per Piece, and Response Time to measure the successes of their campaigns.
Hopkins goes on to say that the most common way to entice consumers is by offering a coupon. With a sample, a book, or a free package, a prospect is stirred to reply in some way (even if they’re not thinking about purchasing). Measuring the amount of action that is produced by a coupon is also a measurement even if not necessarily a purchasing one.
As early as 1923, Hopkins is already talking about giving away free information – something the best internet marketers always do before and during a product launch. Please review my previous post on “The Difference Between An “Expert” And A “Marketer” to understand how important it is to give things for free is.
However, worthless replies are invaluable: “So our final conclusions are always based on cost per customer or cost per dollar of sale” Hopkins writes.
This book is designed to establish the principles and laws of advertising, and teaches marketers not to depart from those unvarying laws.
While advertising was once a gamble, guesses are no longer needed because a path is already paved.
Hopkins ends his intro with the words: “Success is a rarity, a maximum success an impossibility, unless one is guided by laws as immutable as the law of gravitation”.
Hopeful, huh?
Til next chapter!
Anna @ Toronto
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