What About Advertising?
A 1927 Harper & Brothers book by two New York magazine and department-store men, written for the business man who pays for advertising.
What it is
A 1927 Harper & Brothers book by two New York magazine and department-store men, written for the business man who pays for advertising. Its thesis: advertising must follow human behaviour, because its psychology is one of buying, not selling. Across 29 chapters it splits the value of an ad into the reader, the copy and the circulation. It prints keyed-return tables in which identical ads cost a few cents or several dollars per reply depending on copy or medium, cites Daniel Starch's player-piano series (best ad 258 replies, worst 1), and sorts any audience into 15 active, 35 passive and 50 apathetic readers of advertising per 100. It treats copy as the force that does the work and circulation as a multiplier. It retells how Conde Nast wrote the Vogue headline promising $200 saved for $2, and closes by urging readers to test cheaply before spending big.
Why read it now
Most of the core still holds. Creative quality swings results widely, which modern industry studies confirm when they attribute close to half of an ad's sales effect to the creative itself. Testing copy against copy in the same medium is standard practice now. Reach multiplies a message but adds nothing to it, and a headline that offers the reader a concrete gain, as the Vogue ad does, still outpulls a clever one. The warning that experts judge ads badly also stands: in the authors' 1925 example, the ad that artists and advertising men voted best was ranked ninth by the housewives it targeted. What has dated is the lens. Judging everything by cost per reply undervalues brand effects, and the claim that an ad never gains strength after its peak run is contradicted by later long-term evidence on brand building. Some examples, and the tone about women, belong to 1927. How to use it: before scaling a campaign, run two or three versions of the offer in the same channel on the same budget, and let cost per lead pick the copy.
Passages worth keeping
the psychology of advertising is a buying psychology, not a selling psychology.
نجاح الإعلان يُفهم من جهة المشتري وما يدور في ذهنه، لا من جهة البائع وما يريد قوله.
Plenty of advertisers have successfully turned the consumer's mind toward their product. But the millionaires are those who have turned their products toward the consumer's mind.
كثيرون نجحوا في لفت انتباه المستهلك إلى منتجهم، لكن الثروات الكبرى صنعها من غيّروا منتجهم ليوافق ما في ذهن المستهلك.
A headline changed from "Cold Feet" to "Warm Feet" is said immediately to have doubled returns.
قيل إن تغيير العنوان من ذكر المشكلة إلى ذكر النتيجة المرغوبة ضاعف الردود فورًا.
"$2 Spent for Vogue Will Save You $200"
عنوان يضع أمام القارئة مكسبًا واضحًا: اشتراك بدولارين يجنبها أخطاء في شراء الملابس تكلف 200 دولار.
Circulation creates nothing. Circulation adds nothing. Circulation merely multiplies.
حجم الانتشار لا يصنع قيمة الرسالة ولا يضيف إليها، بل يضاعف ما فيها من قوة أو ضعف.
What it teaches best
Read the original worldradiohistory.com
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