Principles of Advertising
Starch's second and far larger treatise, written at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and published by A. W. Shaw.
What it is
Starch's second and far larger treatise, written at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and published by A. W. Shaw. It rests on one idea, that advertising exists to sell or help sell, and is built around five questions: to whom, by what appeals, presented how, through which mediums, and at what expense. Part II teaches market investigation with census and income tables, the questionnaire, and sample studies of Sun-Maid raisins and a boys' clothing department. Part III lists every possible selling point for a toothpaste or a vacuum cleaner, has consumers rank appeals written out as finished copy in laboratory-field tests, and checks those rankings against real returns. Part IV covers suggestive and argumentative copy, four criteria for convincing copy, truth in advertising, headlines, size, colour, layout, trade-marks and packages. Parts V and VI cover mediums and national, retail, foreign and financial advertising.
Why read it now
The core method still works: list every possible appeal, write each one out as final copy, have real buyers rank them, then check the ranking against sales. Starch reports test rankings agreeing with actual returns at correlations of 0.86 for insurance ads and 0.71 for typewriter ads, and a series of lathe ads in which the best drew 40 times the inquiries of the worst. Modern split tests keep finding gaps that wide between ads in one campaign. His four criteria for convincing copy (a strong selling point, specific facts, relevance, truth without overstatement) remain sound, and his advice that foreign copy be written by a native speaker rather than translated applies directly to Arabic work. What has dated: the instinct lists, the fixed views of what each sex buys, the reliance on what people say they prefer, which later research shows often differs from what they do (his own typewriter test misplaced two of fifteen ads badly), and a print-only media world. Use: before a launch, write your eight strongest appeals as finished Arabic lines, have 30 target buyers rank them, and build the campaign on the top two.
Passages worth keeping
The central conception of this book is that the primary function of advertising in business is to sell or to help sell.
الفكرة التي يقوم عليها الكتاب كله أن الإعلان وُجد ليبيع أو يساعد على البيع، لا ليعرّف بالمنتج فقط.
Few business concerns fully realize the literally enormous differences in the effectiveness of the various advertisements in any given series or campaign.
قلّة من الشركات تدرك أن الفرق في النتائج بين إعلانات الحملة الواحدة ضخم، ولذلك يستحق كل إعلان أن يُقاس.
It ought to be specific, rather than general, in the statement of facts or events.
الإعلان المقنع يذكر حقائق ووقائع محددة، ويبتعد عن العبارات العامة التي يمكن أن تقال عن أي منتج.
the headline is the only part of many advertisements which the very large majority, perhaps 90%, of all readers ever catch.
أغلب القراء، وربما 90 بالمئة منهم، لا يرون من الإعلان إلا عنوانه، فالعنوان وحده يحمل الرسالة لمعظم الجمهور.
a literal translation will often overlook idiomatic expressions in a foreign language, the omission of which may often make an advertisement either ridiculous or ineffective.
الترجمة كلمة بكلمة تُسقط تعابير اللغة الخاصة، فيخرج الإعلان مضحكًا أو بلا أثر، ولذلك يكتبه من يعرف لغة البلد وعاداته.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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