The Psychology of Advertising
Walter Dill Scott, director of the psychological laboratory at Northwestern University, set out in 1908 to gather the scattered psychology of advertising into one plain book, dedicated to business men who use science where their predecessors relied on custom.
What it is
Walter Dill Scott, director of the psychological laboratory at Northwestern University, set out in 1908 to gather the scattered psychology of advertising into one plain book, dedicated to business men who use science where their predecessors relied on custom. Chapters cover memory (repetition, intensity, association, ingenuity), feelings and emotions, sympathy, instincts, suggestion, the will, habit and attention. He tests claims with small studies: of 600 men watched in the Chicago Public Library reading room, 65 were reading advertisements at the moment observed; 500 people asked to recall ads after ten minutes with the Century Magazine named each full page about 20 times and each quarter page about 3; 1,247 advertisers in the Ladies' Home Journal were tracked over eight years; and 4,000 Chicago business and professional men were sent a questionnaire about newspapers. Real ads for Cream of Wheat, Thomas Cook and Postum illustrate the points.
Why read it now
Much of Scott still stands. His memory rules match later research: repetition with variation, attention at exposure, and links to what people already know, close to today's work on distinctive brand assets and memory structures. His finding that attention to any one item falls as competing items rise is the clutter effect, still measured. His library count is an early lesson that people read more ads than they admit and fewer than admen claim, so watch behaviour instead of asking. The questionnaire chapter warns that the layout of a form can steer answers, which survey designers still teach. What has dated: the size and survival studies are confounded, since big, established firms buy large spaces and are also better remembered and longer lived for other reasons, and later readership work from Daniel Starch onward found that noting rises with size but less than in proportion. His claim that every thought of an action tends to produce it is overstated. Use: before paying for a bigger format, run a recall test like his: show a panel a real page or feed, take it away, and count what they name.
Passages worth keeping
Advertising has as its one function the influencing of human minds.
يحدد سكوت للإعلان وظيفة واحدة هي التأثير في العقول، ولذلك يرى أن علم النفس هو أساسه العلمي الوحيد.
The power of any object to compel attention depends upon the absence of counter attraction.
قدرة أي عنصر على جذب الانتباه تتوقف على قلة ما ينافسه حوله، فالصفحة المزدحمة تُضعف كل إعلان فيها.
Thousands of magazine readers read advertisements more than they are aware.
الناس يقرؤون الإعلانات أكثر مما يدركون، فلا يصح الاعتماد على كلامهم وحده عن عاداتهم.
But the real question is whether it is twice as valuable, for it costs practically twice as much.
السؤال الحقيقي ليس هل المساحة الأكبر أفضل، بل هل تستحق ضعف السعر حين يتضاعف حجمها.
The taste of foods is partially a matter of sentiment and imagination.
طعم الطعام يتأثر بالمشاعر والخيال، ولذلك يبيع إعلان الطعام صورة وإحساسًا لا مذاقًا فقط.
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
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