Advertising & Selling, Vol. 9, Nos. 6 to 13 (July 13 to October 19, 1927), with "My Life in Advertising" Parts IV to XI
A bound library volume of Advertising & Selling, the New York trade fortnightly edited by Frederick C. Kendall, holding eight issues from July 13 to October 19, 1927.
What it is
A bound library volume of Advertising & Selling, the New York trade fortnightly edited by Frederick C. Kendall, holding eight issues from July 13 to October 19, 1927. Its spine is Claude C. Hopkins's serialized memoir "My Life in Advertising", Parts IV to XI: selling Cotosuet to Boston bakers with a pie card instead of a price argument, the druggist-signed guarantee for Dr. Shoop's remedies, rescuing the bankrupt Liquozone, arguing Van Camp's beans against home baking, featuring engineer Howard Coffin for Chalmers cars, the $700 Palmolive test in Benton Harbor, "Foods shot from guns" for Quaker's puffed grains, and Pepsodent's "film". Around it sit articles by Earnest Elmo Calkins, H. A. Haring, Kenneth M. Goode and others, reader letters on Stuart Chase's "Your Money's Worth", and hundreds of newspaper and magazine ads selling linage and circulation to advertisers.
Why read it now
The memoir is the case file behind Hopkins's Scientific Advertising, told with dollar figures. Several of its rules still hold. Sell the buyer's gain, not your product: the pie cards moved more Cotosuet in a week than six salesmen had in six weeks, which fits what reciprocity research later measured. Key every ad and let coupon returns pick the headline, which is plain A/B testing. Take the risk off the buyer, as the druggist's signed guarantee did. Find the real competitor first: 94 per cent of housewives baked their own beans, so the enemy was the kitchen, not a rival brand. What has dated: his claim that scare copy never works is contradicted by later meta-analyses of fear appeals, and his view that "Free" cheapens a product is only partly supported. The medicine chapters promote Liquozone, which journalists attacked as a fraud in 1905, and he asks readers to judge them by their era. One use: before writing, name what your buyer does today instead of buying, and write against that.
Passages worth keeping
I did not sell Cotosuet, did not talk Cotosuet. I sold pie cards and schemes, and Cotosuet went with them.
لم يتحدث هوبكنز عن المنتج أصلًا، بل قدّم للخباز أداة تزيد مبيعاته، فجاء المنتج معها تبعًا.
When we make an offer one cannot reasonably refuse, it is pretty sure to gain acceptance.
العرض الذي لا يجد العاقل سببًا لرفضه، مثل تجربة يُرد ثمنها إن فشلت، يُقبل في الغالب.
I found that 94 per cent of the housewives baked their own.
اكتشف أن المنافس الحقيقي لفاصوليا فان كامب هو الطبخ في البيت لا العلامات الأخرى، فوجّه إعلاناته ضد هذه العادة.
Personalities appeal, while soulless corporations do not. Make a man famous, and you make his creation famous.
ينجذب الناس إلى شخص له اسم ووجه أكثر من شركة بلا ملامح، فإذا عرّفتهم بالمخترع عرفوا اختراعه.
People will do anything to cure a trouble, but little to prevent it.
يبذل الناس الكثير لعلاج مشكلة وقعت، والقليل لتجنب مشكلة لم تقع، لذلك ركّز هوبكنز على مكسب الجمال لا على الوقاية.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.