OK--it was also there because a really mean professor wanted to make us struggle through "Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon."

But, difficulties with first millennium Saxon aside, the premise of learning about the past to better understand the present seems to have validity. In that spirit, this week's posting reexamines one of the classic advertising books and considers its validity in today's marketing communications environment.  

There are three generally-accepted seminal books about advertising. Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins; Reality in Advertising, by Rosser Reeves; and Confessions of an Advertising Man, by David Ogilvy.

All three were written to promote the advertising agencies of the authors: Scientific Advertising for Lord & Thomas, Reality in Advertising for Ted Bates and Confessions of an Advertising Man for Ogilvy & Mather. Each was successful in building awareness and business. And each has lessons that are still useful today.

This week we'll consider Scientific Advertising.

The book is based on the premise of identifying, quantifying and applying proven rules and principles to develop effective advertising.

The first paragraph sets the tone perfectly: "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."

True in 1923 and true today.

The key qualifier: "in some hands."

It has been possible to develop predictably successful marketing communications at least since 1923. But doing so requires having the discipline and professionalism to learn and apply principles which have been tried and proven effective. That takes a lot of the hip-shooting, adrenaline-pumping excitement out of the process. And blows away the roiling clouds of smoke that add an aura of the near-occult to the creative mystique.

Scientific Advertising's language is, at times, archaic. The society in which Hopkins's advertising functioned is long gone. The mechanics of distribution and targeting he relied upon are obsolete. And when he makes pronouncements based on opinion rather than data, Hopkins was often very wrong.

Our favorite: "The time is fast coming when men who spend money are going to know what they get. Good business and efficiency will be applied to advertising." But 84 years after Hopkins wrote that, Rex Biggs and Greg Stuart found that 37.3% of the money spent on advertising in the United States is still being wasted.

When Hopkins's maxims are based on data or observation, when they proceed from proven principles and techniques, they are perfectly valid today. Here are a dozen examples:

1.    "The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not to aid your other salesmen."

2.    "The advertising man studies the consumer. He places himself in the position of the buyer. His success largely depends on doing that to the exclusion of everything else."

3.    "Remember that the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interest or your profit. They seek service for themselves."

4.    "The competent advertising man must understand psychology...Human nature is perpetual. In most respects it is the same today as in the time of Caesar. So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring."

5.    "When a man knows that something belongs to him – something with his name on it – he will make the effort to get it, even though the thing is a trifle."

6.    "Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck. They leave no impression whatever...a definite statement is usually accepted. Actual figures are not generally discounted. Specific facts, when stated, have their full weight and effect."

7.    "Some advertisers go so far as to never change their ads. Single mail order ads often run year after year without diminishing returns. So with some general ads."

8.    "Changing people's habits is very expensive...to sell shaving soap to the peasants of Russia one would first need to change their beard-wearing habits. The cost would be excessive."

9.    "An ad-writer, to have a chance at success, must gain full information on the subject."

10. "Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign. And that's the way to answer them – not by arguments around a table."

11. "...we let the thousands decide what the millions will do....We establish averages on a small scale and those averages always hold."

12. "A person who desires to make an impression must stand out in some way from the masses. And in a pleasing way...We try to give each advertiser a becoming style. We make him distinctive, perhaps not in appearance, but in manner and tone."

Make the andocentric tone gender neutral, revise an archaic usage or two and those dozen points are as true now as they ever were. In fact we use them all regularly.

 back to top I archive I home

Comment