Printers' Ink, February 11, 1926 (Vol. 134, No. 6)
A weekly issue of the New York advertising paper, filed for S. Roland Hall's "We Can't Always Prove the Sum, Mr. Hopkins", a reply to Claude Hopkins's article of January 28. Hall agrees that soaps, foods and medicines suit coupons, samples and free trials, but says locomotives, air compressors and bonds cannot be sampled and still sell through advertising.
What it is
A weekly issue of the New York advertising paper, filed for S. Roland Hall's "We Can't Always Prove the Sum, Mr. Hopkins", a reply to Claude Hopkins's article of January 28. Hall agrees that soaps, foods and medicines suit coupons, samples and free trials, but says locomotives, air compressors and bonds cannot be sampled and still sell through advertising. His cases: a firm that left the coupon off an $80,000 prestige campaign and never learned whether it paid; Alpha Portland Cement's 10,000 inquiries, sent to dealers as the original letters; a technical paper whose publisher swore his readers never clip coupons. He will not call advertising an "investment" until results are in. Other pieces: Allen T. Moore's six tests for a headline, C. P. Russell on letters that open with a question, W. Livingston Larned on stilted dialogue in ads, and Procter & Gamble answering every consumer letter.
Why read it now
Hall's main point holds: measure wherever the product allows it, and say plainly where it does not. Modern evidence agrees. Response tracking catches short-term sales well, but brand effects build slowly and resist attribution, which is why Binet and Field argue for balancing sales activation with brand building instead of funding only what is easy to count. His cement case is still a sound lead-generation design: offer a useful handbook, ask what the reader plans to build, and pass the original request to the local dealer. His claim that illustration can stand in for demonstration fits product video today. What has dated: the printed coupon as the only feedback tool, the mail-order houses he cites, and his sharp split between people who can write and people who can sell face to face, which is opinion, not evidence. Moore's rule that a headline must be relevant, not bait, still matches what readers punish. Use: give every campaign that carries no direct offer one small tracked response, such as a guide request, and do not call the spend an investment until the numbers come back.
Passages worth keeping
Nobody knows, and nobody is quite happy.
أُطلقت الحملة دون أي وسيلة لقياس أثرها، فبقي المسؤولون بعد إنفاق 80 ألف دولار لا يعرفون هل عاد المال، ولم يرضَ أحد.
the daily bunch of slips with names on the dotted line will at least be straws to show whether the wind blows ill or well.
القسيمة لا تقيس كل أثر الإعلان، لكن الطلبات اليومية تعطي إشارة إلى اتجاه النتائج، وهذا خير من العمل بلا أي إشارة.
As I see advertising, it may be effective telling or effective selling by means of printed word and picture. And its selling function may be the whole job or only part of it.
الإعلان قد يُخبر وقد يبيع، فأحيانًا يُتم البيع كله، وأحيانًا يؤدي جزءًا منه ويترك الباقي للبائع أو التاجر.
It’s time enough to say “investment,” when experience has shown what the purchase has brought.
لا تسمِّ الإنفاق الإعلاني استثمارًا قبل أن تُظهر التجربة ما عاد به فعلًا.
I call the job of halting and interesting the consumer and sending him to a dealer to say “Show me” the most difficult and important part of many selling jobs.
إيقاف المستهلك وإثارة اهتمامه ودفعه إلى المتجر ليطلب رؤية المنتج هو أصعب جزء في كثير من عمليات البيع، حتى لو لم يُغلق الإعلان الصفقة بنفسه.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
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