How to Write Advertisements That Sell: Methods by Which 146 Shrewd Advertisers Plan, Lay Out and Place Their Copy
A 1912 how-to book from the A. W. Shaw Company, publisher of System magazine, built from the methods of 146 advertisers.
What it is
A 1912 how-to book from the A. W. Shaw Company, publisher of System magazine, built from the methods of 146 advertisers. It runs in campaign order: find the vital selling points, rouse buying motives, add sales schemes and pictures, write headlines, reason-why copy and inducements, lay out the ad, choose prospects and mediums, set the budget, and test and keep records. Its core tool is an Advertising Chart that sorts products into four classes, from the new product a buyer thinks he can do without (persuasive copy) to the familiar brand bought by habit (publicity copy), and names five motives: money, utility, pride, caution and self-indulgence. Cases include a tractor resold as an iron horse, a Texas lot sale teased for a month with a cat escaping a bag, thirteen kinds of inducement, and two rival test campaigns whose orders cost 30 and 133 percent of the selling price.
Why read it now
Most of it holds. The four-class chart asks whether the buyer must spend new money or only switch brands, an early form of what Eugene Schwartz later called levels of awareness, and it still decides whether an ad should teach, argue or remind. The rule to aim the whole ad at the one point blocking the sale is sound, and so is the warning that fake urgency sounds fake. The testing chapters are the strongest: key every ad, count every order, let the public judge. A mail order house that credited colored catalog inserts for its growth without separating them from new copy is a clean lesson in confounded results. The note that the first ads pay best and later ones cost more fits modern evidence on wear-out. What has dated: the motive list is crude, and the piano dealer who built his list by trading candy for children's family details would breach data protection law today, Saudi Arabia's PDPL included. Use: place your offer in one of the four classes before briefing copy, and give each channel its own code so every order is traced.
Passages worth keeping
Knowledge of your product in itself is not enough; you must know your product in relation to its prospective purchaser.
معرفة المنتج وحدها لا تكفي، فالمهم أن تعرفه من زاوية المشتري وحاجته.
It is much easier to learn from the cemetery of advertising failures, than to imitate any one advertising success.
دراسة الإعلانات الفاشلة تعلّمك أكثر من تقليد إعلان ناجح، لأنك لا تعرف كل أسباب نجاحه.
The advertisement of highest average efficiency must put its whole strength against the point, or points which are actually blocking the sale.
أنجح الإعلانات يركز كل قوته على العائق الحقيقي الذي يمنع الشراء، ولا يضيع المساحة في نقاط اقتنع بها العميل أصلًا.
Insincere reasons for immediate action usually sound insincere. A true reason can generally be worded in such homely details as to carry absolute conviction.
الدعوة المصطنعة إلى الشراء الفوري تنكشف، أما السبب الحقيقي فيُقنع حين يُكتب بتفاصيل بسيطة من حياة العميل.
Testing copy marks the line between the gambler and the investor in advertising.
من يختبر إعلاناته قبل الإنفاق الكبير مستثمر، ومن لا يختبر مقامر.
What it teaches best
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