#430 How to Write Ads That Sell

Claude Hopkins was the greatest copywriter of all time. His ideas were so valuable that when he wrote them down in a book the founder of his advertising firm locked the manuscript in a safe for 20 years. When the book was finally published it sold over 8 million copies. David Ogilvy said that nobody should work in advertising until they had read the book seven times. This episode is what I learned by reading Claude Hopkins' autobiography My Life In Advertising and his legendary book Scientific Advertising. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders Some of my favorite quotes: 0:00 — "Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to his successors." 5:12 — "The man who works twice as long as his fellows is bound to go twice as far, especially in advertising." 5:30 — "If I have gone higher than others in advertising or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability but to exceptional hours." 6:48 — "To poverty I owe the fact that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of experience instead of the school of theory." 9:08 — "Which is work and which is play? If a thing is useful, they call it work. If it's useless, they call it play. But one is hard as the other. All the difference I see lies in the attitude of the mind." 9:32 — "I came to love work as other men love golf. I love it still. The love of work can be cultivated just like the love of play." 9:58 — "We do best what we like best." 13:05 — "A good product is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods without samples." 15:00 — "We must never judge humanity by ourselves. The things we want, the things we like may appeal to a small minority." 15:23 — "We must submit all things in advertising to the court of public opinion." 17:48 — "Some of the greatest successes I have ever known in advertising were ignorant men. One wrote copy which would induce a farmer to mortgage his barn to respond, but every sentence had to be edited for grammar." 20:23 — "John Powers created a new concept of advertising. He told the truth, but told it in a rugged and fascinating way." 25:47 — "Study salesmen, canvassers, and fakers if you want to know how to sell goods. No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration." 26:35 — "The average salesman seeks favors. He seeks profit for himself. His plea is, 'Buy my goods.' He makes a selfish appeal to selfish people, and of course, he meets resistance. I was selling service." 28:45 — "We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person." 31:23 — "Others have never told this story. It will startle everyone in print. I gave purity a meaning." (On Schlitz Beer jumping from 5th to 1st.) 32:03 — "Tell the pains that you take to excel. The maker is too close to his product. He sees in his methods only the ordinary." 34:08 — "The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness. People will listen if you talk service to them. They will turn their backs when you seek to impress an advantage for yourself." 41:23 — "People will do anything to cure a trouble, but little to prevent it. Prevention offers slight appeal to humanity in general. They want to be told of rewards." 1:01:30 — "Genius is the art of taking pains. The advertising man who spares the midnight oil will never get very far. This is no lazy man's field."

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This book is not written as a personal history, but as a business story. I've tried to confine myself to matters of instructive interest. The chief object behind every episode is to offer helpful suggestions to those who will follow me and to save them some of the midnight groping which I did. Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to his successors. The results of research should be recorded. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all that I've tried to do. My only claim is that I have probably worked twice as long as anybody else in this field. I have lived for many years in a vortex of advertising.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Naturally, I learned more from that experience than those who had a lesser chance. I want that experience to help others avoid the same difficult climb. I set down these findings solely for that purpose of aiding others to start far up the heights that I scaled. Had someone set down a record like this when I began, I would have blessed him for it. So that is Claude Hopkins writing the preface of his autobiography, which is called My Life in Advertising. When you buy this book, it actually comes with a second book that he wrote, a book that he wrote maybe four decades before he wrote his autobiography, which is called Scientific Advertising. So I actually, I reread these books. I read these, both these books for the first time, I don't know, like probably like five years ago.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  And I found them because one of my personal heroes is this guy named David Olgry. And David Olgry said essentially like, he built the foundation for his giant advertising agency that he founded, just on the work alone of Claude Hopkins. And I originally set out to write. So here's a crazy story for you. This will explain everything that I want to talk to you about today. So there is a book written by Claude Hopkins, which is called Scientific Advertising. Okay. It has sold like eight million, 10 million copies. It's probably the most important book ever written on advertising. If you factor in who read the book and then what it influenced to build after that. The book was so valuable that when Claude first wrote it, he showed it to the founder of the firm that he is working for, this guy named Albert Lasker.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Now, this is really important to follow because Albert Lasker is the person that made the most money in advertising ever. Albert Lasker read the book, told Claude Hopkins, absolutely not. You are not publishing this book. This is giving away all of our secrets. You have to wait until I'm done making all this money. Albert Lasker put the book into a safe for 20 years. When Albert Lasker was done, quit his advertising agency, I think he wound up giving it to some of his employees and left. Then Claude Hopkins was allowed to publish the book called Scientific Advertising, which is then over the last, you know, 100 years. Cause I think the book came out like 1920, maybe 1930, something like that. Has sold, you know, almost 10 million copies. Okay.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  So then this week, I was like, oh, I've been wanting to focus on headlines and essentially like, how do you distill down the most important idea into, you know, maxim, which you know, you know, I'm obsessed with. And then how do I apply that to headlines? Because for my other show, the new show I started last year, where I'm actually, you know, having conversations with some of the greatest living founders, a lot of the, there's like so much, so much of the value in the conversations is down into these like small clips of three, four, six minutes. And personally, I was reading Scientific Advertising to get better at writing a way to distill a main message from like a three minute clip into like a one sentence that would essentially act as a headline for a clip. Right? And so I was like, I'm going to read this whole book.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  I finished reading Scientific Advertising, I'm like, God damn, this is good. And then it made me go back and start, I didn't, I wasn't planning on doing this episode the way I'm doing it right now. And then I go back and reread his autobiography, which I wasn't planning to talk to you about today. I was just going to talk to you about Scientific Advertising. Damn it, there's too much good stuff in here. So then what I did is went back and compiled all my notes and all my highlights into this one book, which I just transferred. I spent, you know, the last, I don't know, like 10 hours or something. It took a long time to do this. Of all my notes and highlights for both books into the book that I'm holding into my hand. So that's what I'm going to go through with you today. Not really, I skipped over large parts of his personal life and his life story.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  I just want to tell you the fact that this guy probably spent more time, he's arguably the greatest copywriter in history, and he spent more time doing that than anybody else. And he, there's just these principles and these handful of ideas that he's going to repeat over and over again. And I think it really, really will help you better sell, better market, better advertise whatever product it is that you're building. So let's just jump right into this. He says, I've supported myself since the age of nine. He started working 16 hours a day when he was still in what we'd call junior high. Okay. And then the reason that's important is because he also applied that when he starts into the advertising business, I did the same in business. I had no working hours. When I ceased before midnight, that was a holiday for me. I often left my office at two o'clock in the morning. Sundays were my best working days because there was no interruptions.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  For 16 years after entering business, I rarely had an evening or a Sunday not occupied by work. I am not advising others to follow my example, but the man who works twice as long as his fellows is bound to go twice as far, especially in advertising. There is some difference in brains, of course, but it is not so important as the difference in industry. The man who does two or three times the work of others learns two or three times as much. He makes more mistakes and more successes and he learns from both. If I have gone higher than others in advertising or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability, but to exceptional hours. So I'm going to interrupt my own self here because what I'm holding in my hand is, you

• 5:42Speaker 00

  know, 300 and maybe 320 pages of the most important lessons from working 16 hours a day for five decades. Okay. So he says, in fact, if I've gone any higher than anybody else, it's not because I had a bigger brain, it's just due, it's not exceptional ability, it's just because I devoted exceptional hours to this trade. Says, it means that a man, and he's talking about himself, it means that a man has sacrificed all else in life to excel in this one profession. So I got to this part, you know, I probably read that highlight, I don't know, maybe half a dozen times in my life. The thing that jumped out to me is that this, this, one of Charlie Munger's favorite founders, this guy named Les Schwab. And Les essentially did the same thing that Claude Hopkins did in advertising, Les did

• 6:27Speaker 00

  in building one of the most successful tire chains in the United States history. And he says, whatever you do, you must do it with gusto. You must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat. Talks about the fact that his mother was left a widow when he, when Claude Hopkins was 10, that they, he grew up in poverty. And he says, to poverty, I owe the fact that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of experience instead of the school of theory. And one of the most important lessons he learned in the school of experience and school of theory, he actually learned from a guy that was a railroad section foreman. And that is the importance of using the most of every hour of the day and then treating your work as play.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  I'm going to, you'll find today, I'm going to repeat, you know, he probably has about a half a dozen ideas, I would say, that he just repeats over and over again. And he repeats them in both books. And keep in mind, I think the books were written probably 30 to 40 years apart. And so this is the idea of treating work as play and making most use of every hour of the day is a reoccurring theme that Claude's going to repeat over and over again. So he talks about, he's like, this man exerted a remarkable influence on me. He was a railroad section foreman. And so he was, Claude's a young, young person at this time, the railroad section foreman's a little older and he's kind of just kind of schooling Claude to the game. He says, he impressed with me the difference between him and his helpers. The helpers worked from necessity. They did as little as possible. They counted the hours to quitting time. And then on Saturday nights, they'd go into the city and spend all the money they had earned in that week.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  The foreman, on the other hand, worked with enthusiasm. He says, the men would work as though work was a bore, but the foreman made the work a game. That man built his home in the evenings after 10 hour days on the railroad. He cultivated a garden around it. Then he married the prettiest girl in the section and lived a life of bliss. I learned great lessons from him. And then he's talking about, he's reflecting on this conversation that he had with this railroad section foreman. Look at those fellows whittling, discussing railroads, talking politics. The most that any of them know about a railroad is how to drive a spike. They will always do that and know more. Note what I have done while they loafed there this evening. Built most of the porch on my home.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  So he worked all day, then he's trying to again, just improve his station in life. I'm going to build this own, my own house. I'm done working on the railroad. I can then improve something that's important to me, something that will last a long time in my life, which is this home. And he continues. So, you know, they're, they're messing around, they're bullshitting. I'm building, I'm making better use of that time. I'm building this porch and extending and making my home more valuable. Soon I will be sitting on that porch in comfort, making love to a pretty wife. They will always be sitting on these soapboxes, which is work and which is play. If a thing is useful, they call it work. If it's useless, they call it play. But one is hard as the other. One can be just as much of a game as the other. In both, there can be a rivalry. There is a struggle to excel.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  All the difference I see lies in the attitude of the mind. That is the end of the quote from the railroad section foreman. Back to Claude writing in his autobiography, I've never forgot those talks. I came to love work as other men love golf. I love it still. Many a time I beg off from a bridge game, a dinner or a dance to spend the evening in my office. I steal away from weekend parties at my country home to enjoy a few hours at my typewriter. So the love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play. The terms are interchangeable. What others call work, I call play and vice versa. We do best what we like best. Now, how funny is this? Okay. So this guy is named Claude, dedicated his life to learning advertising.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Last week, you and I talked about another Claude, Claude Shannon, dedicated his life. Obviously, one of the things he's known for is creating information theory, but you know, he invented the first wearable computer. He's just, he's just a very eccentric person. And again, what was the biography of Claude Shannon, A Mind at Play? But it's funny that they both looked at work as play. But even more interesting is there's a direct quote in Claude Shannon's biography where he said, you know, what we do best is what we like best. And we see Claude Hopkins saying the same thing as Claude Shannon. If that is chasing a polo ball, one will excel at that. If that means checkmating competitors or getting a home run, he will excel in that. So it means a great deal when a young man can come to regard his life work as the most fascinating game that he knows. That is awesome.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  And it should be. This is just fantastic writing. And it should be. The applause of athletics dies in a moment. The applause of success gives one cheer to the grave. Before we get back into this, I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately. SpaceX is one of the most valuable businesses in the world. And one of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your cost. Ramp helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. And they do this by using first principles thinking. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And one thing that SpaceX has demonstrated is that a religious dedication to controlling your costs helps increase revenue because you can pursue opportunities you couldn't otherwise.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  And we see that in the Ramp data, too. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by 16%. So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top founders and CEOs that I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should, too. Go to ramp.com today to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com. Okay. So now we're going to go back into, I just told you that, I was going to say we're going to go back into some of his ideas for advertising, but this actually talks about the fact that his father died, his mother was left a widow.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  But so they're trying to find ways out of necessity, okay, to survive. And his mother starts making a homemade silver polish. So for, at the time, a lot of housewives, you know, you had a bunch of things, like you would present food or drink, whatever the case is, in like these silver plates. And so his mom made a way to make the silver shiny, okay? And so as a kid, I think he's 10, 11 years old when he's doing this, he's going door to door and trying to sell this silver polish that his mother has essentially home manufactured, right? Says, "I went from house to house to sell it. I found that I sold about one woman in 10 by merely talking about the polish. But when I could get into the house and demonstrate the polish, I sold to nearly all.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  That taught me another lesson I have never forgotten. A good product is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods without samples." So that's, again, another idea that he's going to repeat over and over again, that one great product demonstration, letting the person use it without payment, whatever the case is, it's very, very important. Now, if you remember, one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time is Estee Lauder. And Estee Lauder's autobiography, I think I've read three or four times, I've done probably two or three episodes on that book, if I remember correctly. And when she was starting out, she didn't have a lot of money. So her and her husband, when they're starting the company, like, okay, well, we have this advertising budget, right? But we don't have many, very many customers. We know we made a great product.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  So Estee made, essentially, the cornerstone of one of her empire was this idea of giving a free sample. So she actually took money out of the advertising budget and decided, hey, I'm going to shift that money from my advertising budget into production, because I'm at very limited means of time, and I'm going to actually produce more of my product, not to sell, but to give away. And she would talk about the people, and she would stop people on the street. She would do this, obviously, when she had stores as well. But she said, "The benefit of that is, one, the product speaks for itself. If you think you have the best product, then you're going to win on that alone. But there's an inherent desire to reciprocate in human nature." So Estee goes up to a woman, says, "Here, try this lipstick, try this blush, whatever the case is." She tries it, she likes it.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Not only will she come back to Estee to buy more of the thing that she was giving free, but then she'll tell all her friends about it. This is a very, that word of mouth, I forgot what she called it. She called like phone a friend or phone a woman in her autobiography, but she said, you know, essentially, she knew she was going to do this for the rest of her life, and she just let, she knew word of mouth was going to be the engine that powered, you know, the business that she was trying to build over the following decades. And what I love about, going back to this book, what I love about this, this is like, he doesn't, he just speaks and writes very plainly. It's like, here's another lesson. Pay attention to this part, he literally says, "There's another lesson. We must never judge humanity by ourselves. The things we want, the things we like, may appeal to a small minority. The losses occasioned in advertising by venturing on personal preference would easily pay the

• 15:11Speaker 00

  national debt. There are divided opinions. So in every preference and every want, only the obstinate and the boneheaded will venture far on personal opinion. We must submit all things in advertising to the court of public opinion." This is the main theme of this book. "I own an ocean-going yacht, but do you suppose I'd venture across the ocean without a chart or a compass?" So there's another idea. He's already mentioned something. He's like, "Well, you know, sometimes I'm at my country house, and I want to steal away everybody else's partying, and I'm sitting back at the typewriter." Now, he's like, "Hey, I got a yacht, too, by the way. How do you think I got that?" From sitting at the typewriter and coming up with words that make cash, the cash register ring, okay?

• 15:56Speaker 00

  That implied in there, which I don't think you know unless you read the book first, he has this idea, he started out as like a bookkeeper. And he's like, "The problem is, I'm on the expense side of a business." And he was like, "Who's making all the money here?" And he's like, "Well, if I can go away from the, be treated as an expense by the owner of this business, to somebody that's bringing more sales to the owner of the business, I will get compensated because I could say, hey, I brought you in a more than a million dollars of toothpaste sales. Let me get $200,000 of the million I brought in." And so his whole thing, when he's counseling young men, and I guess young women, too, is to get away from the expense side of the business, stay close to the money. Stay close to the money.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Let's go back to this section, what he's talking about, though. He's like, "You have to study human nature. There's all kinds of things, products that you think..." He mentions this over and over again, the importance of testing. He's like, "You know how many times somebody brought me a product that I was like, why do you want me to advertise this stupid thing that's never going to sell? He does the best job he possibly can, and it just sells like crazy because he didn't understand. It's like, that didn't appeal to me, but the world is huge. There's billions of people, and it appealed to them." So he says, "Some of the greatest successes I have ever known in advertising..." This is hilarious. So he's also talking about hiring and some of the people that worked under him. And really, that you'll just get way further if you just understand human nature. He talks about the importance of studying psychology, understanding incentives, understanding

• 17:22Speaker 00

  what drives people, understanding what in human nature never changes. And he tried to recruit people for his company from very common, uneducated people. So these are, you would say, he's like, these people were street smart. They had almost no book smarts, but they damn sure knew how humans thought and what motivated them and how to influence them to buy the products that they're selling. And so he talks about two of them here. "Some of the greatest successes I have ever known in advertising were ignorant men. Two are now heads of agencies. One of them has made, has made much money in advertising, a man who could hardly sign his name, but he knew people and the people bought what he had to sell. One of them, one of these men, wrote copy which would induce a farmer to mortgage his

• 18:05Speaker 00

  barn to respond, but every sentence had to be edited for grammar." So that's another thing he's going to repeat over and over again. Make sure you're understanding. He reads a lot of history, reads a lot of psychology, reads a lot of philosophy, understands people. It says, "No man can succeed in any line where he finds himself in disagreement and where an unhappiness results. I consider business as a game." How many times? We're 34 pages into this book, and I've already mentioned this at least once. It's probably appeared four different times by the time I get to this. "I consider business a game, and I play it as a game. That is why I have been and still am so devoted to it." It goes back to what Claude Shannon last week. You tend to like and to be good at things that you like.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Charlie Munger's version of this is intense, he has this great line where he says, "Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel at it." When I first heard Charlie say that, or first read that Charlie said that, it's like, "Love what you do or find another line of work." And again, because you're going to be, it's all these like little things on the edge where it's like, okay, I can work eight hours a day if you had a normal job, that's something I hate, or I can work eight hours a day at something I love. And even if you only constrain yourself to those eight hours, you're going to be thinking about it in your off time, you're going to be reading, you know, trade journals on it, you're going to be seeking out other people and building relationships with people that are interested in the same things you are. It's just like, that love is so important.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  Already mentioned this, but the importance of staying close to the money. He says, "The big salaries are paid to the salesman, to the men who bought in orders, or to the men in the factory who reduce costs. They could increase profits, and if you can show profits, then you can command a reasonable share of those profits." Everybody, we, I've read, I don't know, probably six, I've probably done six to 10 different episodes on all the advertising agency founders, most of which I found through David Ogilvy. But with all of them, they're all will talk about, like, there was a kind of like a blueprint, or somebody they learned from, that then they use their ideas to build their company. Claude Hopkins is no different. He really admired this guy named John Powers.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  And what he learned about studying the advertising that John Powers would create, he's just like, well... The main principle of John Powers is like, tell the truth. You just have to tell in an interesting and fascinating way. So it says, John Powers created a new concept of advertising. He told the truth, but told it in a rugged and fascinating way. At the time, he was working for Wanamaker.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  And that company was paying John Powers $12,000 a year. So keep in mind, this is like the early 1900s. This is like a crazy high salary. And he says, the principles to which John Powers stood are still among our advertising fundamentals. And so he gives this example of one of the most interesting things that he saw John Powers do. So this clothing company goes, they're on the verge of bankruptcy and they call Powers. And he immediately measures up the situation and this is what he says. He goes, there's only one way out. Tell the truth. Tell the people that you're bankrupt and that your only way to salvation lies through large and immediate sales. The clothing dealers argue that such an announcement would bring every creditor to their door. But Powers said, it doesn't matter. Either tell the truth or I quit. So this is the ad. Okay. So the ad read something like this.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  We are bankrupt. We owe $125,000 more than we can pay. This announcement will bring our creditors down on our necks. But if you come and buy tomorrow, we shall have the money to meet them. If not, we're going to go to the wall. These are the prices we are quoting to meet this situation. Says, truth was such a rarity in advertising that this announcement created a sensation. People flocked by the thousands to buy and the store was saved. And before we get back into this, I want to tell you about AppLovin. One of my all time favorite quotes is from the book Zero to One. In that book, Peter Thiel writes, he says, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places. And they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  And that is exactly what AppLovin has done with their advertising platform. AppLovin connects you with over a billion potential new customers in mobile games. AppLovin allows you to capture undivided attention. AppLovin ads are full screen videos that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. And you can launch on AppLovin in minutes. You set the goal and AppLovin achieves it. No complex setup, no expertise needed. And AppLovin scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increased their revenue by millions. So you want to get started quickly before all of your competitors are on AppLovin.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  And you can do that by going to applovin.com. That's applovin.com. And then I want to tell you about Vanta. Vanta, Vanta, Vanta. Vanta helps your company prove you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. Vanta is an AI powered security expert that scales with you. The more your business grows, the more complex your security needs get. And that complexity turns into chaos. Vanta tames that chaos for you. Vanta automates compliance, continuously monitors your controls and gives you a single source of truth for compliance and risk. So whether you're a fast growing startup or an enterprise company, Vanta fits easily into your existing workflows. Many companies won't sign contracts unless you're certified and this is causing you to lose out on sales.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  That is why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment after becoming a Vanta customer. Automate your compliance, security and trust with Vanta. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com/founders and you'll get $1,000 off. That is vanta.com/ founders. Another reoccurring theme in this book is just how much effort Claude just works more than anybody else. Even this is before he was rich. This is him trying to start out. He learns that this company, there's a story that goes on for many pages in the book. I'm just going to give you like this brief overview. So one of the companies that has one of the largest advertising budgets in the United States at the time is looking for a head of advertising. Claude hears about the job and he doesn't do what normal people do.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  It's like, okay, I'm going to apply or maybe like I'll call and like knock on the guy's door and see if I can, you know, talk to him 101 or something. Claude does all that, but then he also has dozens of people send letters to the head of hiring that testify to his skill, to Claude's skill as a copywriter and advertiser. He then starts writing a daily column in the newspaper on advertising and sharing everything that he learned so that the person in charge of the hiring sees it. And of course, you know, the end result, Claude is going to be the one that gets that job. Another thing that he repeats over and over again, you don't want any distance between you and the end buyer. Like if you're, if you're right up on top of them, you can hear, you can see how, what they reject. You can see what appeal like lights up their eyes.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  You have to stay close to the buyer and his whole point. And this is something that a lot of the advertising agency founders said, it's like the best people were like door to door salesmen, direct response advertisers. And so he says, study, and he even said like, think about, he would spend time, this is before there was lighting. You know, the people that would gather like in the town square. He said, he'd spend hours under torchlight reading. And some of these people were like snake oil salesmen, kind of like Rockefeller's dad. If you study the history of Rockefeller, his dad would go town to town and kind of sell like literally snake oil, like remedies for everlasting life or a way to cure cancer if you drink this thing. And they would stand on top of essentially like a box and they would preach and try to sell. And Claude said he would spend hours under torchlight, listening and seeing how like, what appeals worked for them.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  So basically the advice is like, stay as close as possible to the end buyer. So study salesmen, canvassers and fakers. If you want to know how to sell goods, no argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration. Another thing he says over and over again, I'm going to quote Henry Ford, one of my favorite maxims from history of entrepreneurship. Money comes naturally as a result of service. I see this all the time. You can look at ads, I see this especially when I fly into San Francisco, I do a lot of recording there now. And you look at the billboards, they have the worst, it's like some of the most valuable companies in the world. And some of the worst billboards you've ever seen, because all the billboards talk about is me, me, me, me. Buy my product. And his whole thing is just like, no one cares about your company. No one cares about your product.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  You should be positioning your ads to not about you or your product or your company, about what you can do for them. The basic, this is a basic conception of selling. This is what Claude Hopkins says. The average salesman seeks favors. He seeks profit for himself. His plea is buy my goods. He makes a selfish appeal to selfish people. And of course he meets resistance. I was selling service. So he's talking about some of the success that he had early in his career. Says, I was selling service. The whole basis of what I would talk about was to help them get more business. The advantage to myself was covered up in my efforts to please him. All good salesmanship, which is all he considers advertising. Says, advertising is just salesmanship in print.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  All good salesmanship is based on appealing to service. Says over and over again, he will repeat that dozens of times in the book. That's not an exaggeration. Everywhere we see advertisers merely crying a name. They say, buy my brand. Their whole evident desire is some selfish advantage. Such advertising may sometimes pay to an extent, but it can never pay like appeals which appear unselfish. Another one of his main lessons, his main ideas, create your advertising as if a single person was standing in front of you. Says, my everlasting argument was against dealing with people in the mass. For instance, a woman once wrote to us inquiring about a sewing machine. She had that on her mind and nothing else.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  The general plan of the business that Hopkins was working for was to send. So she writes a letter inquiring about a sewing machine that the company's selling, right? The company before Claude Hopkins would then return her a catalog of everything. Says, treating all inquiries alike, big mistake. I urge that every inquiry should be treated like a prospect who came into a store. We had a special catalog on sewing machines, showing every style and price. We sent that sewing, so if you call in, or excuse me, if you wrote in about sewing machines, this is what Claude Hopkins changed, right? We have a catalog dedicated to this, shows everything we're doing. Says, every style and price, send that to her. Okay. Then we also sent the names of everybody in her town, in her vicinity, who had bought our sewing machine.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  We then asked her, hey, go see the machines in person for yourself if you'd like, and then talk with the owners about whether they like it or not. He says, this is another valuable principle. We are too apt to regard people in the mass. We must get down to individuals. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person. He's going to say that a million times. That's, I think that's the summary right there. Just act if you're writing an ad, you're writing a headline, you're making a billboard, making a 30 second podcast ad for God's sake. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person, center on their desires. Now he's combining those ideas. It's not about you. What do they want? Consider the person who stands before you with certain expressed desires. However, big your business, get down to the units, for those units are all that makes size.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Now, there's another idea that he has that I've never forgotten since the first time. This is probably the, the main idea I learned from him last time. And it's this idea that you really need to tell the pains that you take to excel and to create your product, even if they're not unique to your business. This is fascinating. So he gets hired by Schlitz Beer, okay? At the time Schlitz Beer was, had the fifth most market share. So there's, you know, there's four other beers that are outselling them and they hire Hopkins like, hey, how can you help us increase our sales, right? And so he goes, okay, well, first step of any great ad is research. I gotta figure out like what your business is about, why your product is good, how you make it, everything else. So he goes and visits them at their brewery.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  He says, "I saw plate glass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes and I asked the reason for them. They told me that those rooms were filled with filtered air so the beer could be cooled in purity. I saw great filters filled with white wood pulp. They explained how that filtered the beer. They show how they clean every pump and pipe twice daily to avoid contaminations. Every bottle was cleaned four times by machinery. They showed me artisan wells where they went 4,000 feet deep for pure water. They showed me the vats where the beer was aged for six months before it went out to the user. They took me to their laboratory and showed me their original mother yeast cell. It had been developed by 1,200 experiments to bring out the utmost in flavor." And Hopkins is like, "Guys, what are you doing? This is amazing. Why have you not told people

• 30:43Speaker 00

  these things? Why do you not, why do you merely try to cry louder than others that your beer is pure? Why don't you tell the reasons?" The response from the company is, "Well, the processes we use are just the same as others. No one can make good beer without them." And this is the most important part of the story. "But I replied, 'Others have never told this story. It amazes everyone who goes through your brewery. It will startle everyone in print.'" So then he takes what he learned and puts it into an ad. "So I pictured in print those plate glass rooms and every other factor in purity. I told a story common to all good brewers, but a story which had never been told. I gave purity a meaning. Schlitz jumped from fifth place to neck and neck with first place in a few months."

• 31:28Speaker 00

  And he says, "This doesn't just work for beer, it works for any company, any product. Again and again, I have told simple facts, common to all makers in that industry, too common to be told, but they have given the product first allied with them an exclusive and lasting prestige. That situation occurs in many, many lines. The maker is too close to his product. He sees in his methods only the ordinary. He does not realize that the world at large might marvel at those methods and that facts which seem commonplace to him might give him vast distinction." Tell the pains that you take to excel. And then a few pages later, he repeats one of his main ideas, "Serve better than others, offer more help than others, and you are pretty sure to win."

• 32:13Speaker 00

  And a few pages after that, he hits back on service. "Think only from your customer's perspective. There are other ways to win in selling and in advertising, but they are slow and uncertain. Ask a person to take a chance on you and you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him and the way is easy." So then he gets to the point where he's working advertising, he's built up a little bit of talent, and then he meets, everybody met Albert Lasker, this is the guy I mentioned earlier that Claude's gonna work for for 17 years, I think, and who hides Claude's original manuscript in his safe. But everybody met him and said he was just like, had some of the most charisma. This is the guy that made more money in advertising than anybody else. And this quick story is just too funny and you might be use it as an idea in your business

• 32:57Speaker 00

  when you're recruiting somebody, but this is just how Albert Lasker recruits. And so it says, "Mr. Lasker said, 'I have searched the country for copies,' talking about copyrighting, okay? 'This is the copy I got in New York. This is the copy I got in Philadelphia. I spent thousands of dollars to get the best copy obtainable. You see the result. Neither you nor I would submit it. Now I ask you to help me. Give me three ads which will start this campaign and your wife may go down to Michigan Avenue and select any car on the street and have it charged to me.'" And then this is now what Claude says. "So far as I know, no ordinary human being has ever resisted Albert Lasker. He has commanded what he would in this world. Presidents have made him their pal. Nothing he desired has

• 33:42Speaker 00

  ever been forbidden him. So I yielded, as all do, to his persuasiveness." Now, a few pages later, he goes back to one of his favorite ideas. "That's another big point to consider. Argue anything for your own advantage and people will resist to the limit, but seem unselfishly to consider your customers' desires and they will naturally flock to you. The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness. People will listen if you talk service to them. They will turn their backs when you seek to impress an advantage for yourself. This is important." And again, both these books, it's just him documenting the mistakes and the successes that he sees people, that he sees people make over and over again. We just went to Schlitz Beer. He's like, "This is amazing. Why aren't you telling people about this?"

• 34:25Speaker 00

  And they're like, "Well, because like, we do it, but everybody does it." And he's about to mention that, that you actually should not write your own advertising because you're too close to your own company. And again, he ties that idea to another idea that you always need to think from the customer's perspective. "There lies the chief reason why no manufacturer should ever conduct its own advertising. He's too close to his factory. His own interests tend to blind him to the interests of his customers. He fails to appreciate the customer's side. He tells of things that he takes pride in, the size of his plant or how, or the age of his business, for example. The advertising man must study the consumer and tell the consumer what he wants to know." Again, everything from the customer's perspective. When you hear this over and over again, after

• 35:10Speaker 00

  you're done listening to this, just go look at, you know, flip through a magazine, go look at a billboard, see any ad that you see on social media. It's like, the good ads are appealing to you. They talk about what you want. They're from your perspective and you will see, it would be shocking, once you realize this, how many companies just fail to do that very basic premise. Again, these are words in many cases are 100 years old. This is not new information. Oh, I love this part. This is just a random thing that I think has to do with like the circle of competence that Buffett talks about a lot. And Claude Hopkins sees it in, you know, his customers too, where they'll be very successful with one product and one business and they're like, "Hey, I'm a genius." And so therefore they try to go off and do a completely unrelated business and they fall flat on their face.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  He says, "It is curious how we all desire to excel in something outside of our own province. This leads many men astray. Men make money in one business and lose it in others. They seem to feel that one success makes them super businessmen." So let me back up about how I found Claude Hopkins years ago. I was, it had nothing to do with advertising. I was reading Warren Buffett's shareholder letters. I'm about to do another episode on this. It's gonna take me like, probably two months to make because the book is, you know, this is like a encyclopedia now that Warren has written his last shareholder letter. So it's just gonna take, it's gonna be the longest founders episode I ever do. The one, the previous time I did this is still the longest episode I ever did. I think it's like back in the episode in the eighties or something? It's like three hours long. But anyways, I'm reading Warren Buffett's shareholder

• 36:38Speaker 00

  letters many, many years ago. And he keeps calling this guy David Ogilvy a genius. I'm like, "What the hell is going on here? Who's David Ogilvy?" So then I look into him, read David Ogilvy, read everything about him, read everything he wrote, and he'll, like everybody else, he'll tell you who his heroes were. And I kinda, I chased that, you know, path down. And there's something in this interaction between Buffett, who was a shareholder, because Ogilvie and Mather was a public company and Buffett was making, buying up the stock. In fact, interesting enough, Buffett made more money on Ogilvie's company than Ogilvie did because Ogilvie got scared and sold his equity too early before it appreciated. That's interesting. But Buffett was giving them advice because at the time Ogilvie and Mather was going around and they were on this acquisition spree and they were like buying up all these

• 37:19Speaker 00

  agencies. And Buffett thought that didn't actually make that much sense. And he goes, "Instead of buying other agencies, why not buy the best agency, your own?" And he was telling him, he's like, "You should buy back your own stock." I thought that, slight tangent, but I thought that was really interesting. Another thing that Claude Hopkins repeats over and over again, like, "Let people try your product, give samples, give demonstrations, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. I have never found that it paid to give samples to people who do not request it. We must arouse interest in our product before it has value to anybody. I consider promiscuous sampling a very bad plan indeed. Products handed out without asking lose respect."

• 38:01Speaker 00

  It is different when you force people to make an effort. So put an ad, say, "Hey, if you wanna learn more about this, or you wanna, you know, get a free month," or whatever the case is, or "I'll send this vacuum cleaner to your house and you can use it for a month or whatever." And all you have to do is fill out this thing. They have to do something first and to make it, you see this online, you give your email, whatever the case is. But it's like, just don't airdrop it on them. Cause it's just like, "Hey, I'm gonna send, you know, 3 million vacuum cleaners to people." If you wanna use the vacuum cleaner example that he uses in the book. He's like, "What the hell does a vacuum cleaner show up at my door for?" So that would be an example of promiscuous sampling. So no, just ask them. They have to do a little bit of effort, but then give them a lot in return. It is different when you force people to make an effort.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  Here we go again. He's already mentioned a dozen variations of this same idea. It's impossible to get to the end of the book, or even really the end of this episode with not this, this idea being seared into your brain. You cannot go into a well-occupied field on the simple appeal of buy my brand. That is a selfish appeal. It's repugnant. One must offer exceptional service to induce people to change from favorite brands to yours. The usual advertiser does not offer that exceptional service. He's talking about, he's just, he's in a C. He's in an industry of secondary talent. He says, "If you give service where others fail to supply it, you can establish a great advantage for yourself." So again, goes back to, it's not about you, it's about service over and over and over again. Another thing that he says is, and they use examples, many examples in the book,

• 39:27Speaker 00

  where let's say you have, you know, Acme Furniture Company, or you have Mrs. B's Furniture Mart, that if you can give your product and your advertising personality, make it an individual. So you should be speaking to them as an individual. But if it comes from an individual, and then hopefully there's a real person behind it. People love companies, or excuse me, people love people way more than they love companies. And so, and one of his brands, he established a personality, and it's this guy named Professor Anderson, and there's an actual person behind it, okay? And he says, "I've always done that wherever possible. Personalities appeal while soulless corporations do not. Make a man famous, and you make his creation famous. All of us love to study men and their accomplishments." And you're seeing this a lot.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  My friend Lulu, the survey, advises, you know, many of the tech, like the most elite founders in tech, she handles their personal comms. And a lot, her manifesto is just like, "You should go direct, like you're the one..." Very similar to the advice that James Dyson's mentor gave him, you know, half a century ago. It's like, "You came up with a product, you know, every single in and out of the product, you, you're the guardian of the company's soul. You should be the one doing the selling. You should be the one out there making the case for why people should, you know, work for your company, buy your product, invest in your company, all this." Again, like, it's a, people relate to people, not companies.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Another thing, prevention is not a, an appeal that's gonna work, that you should be selling painkillers, not vitamins. He made a ton of money off Pepsodent toothpaste, which I'll get to in a minute. And so he's talking about this, an entire chapter of everything he did for Pepsodent. And he says, "I resolved to advertise this toothpaste as a creator of beauty. The natural idea in respect to a toothpaste at the time was to make it preventative. So, you know, use it now so your teeth don't fall out, or your teeth don't decay." He says, "But my experience has taught me that preventative measures were not popular. People will do anything to cure a trouble, but little to prevent it. Countless advertising ideas have been wrecked by not understanding that phase of human nature. Prevention offers slight appeal to humanity in general. They want to be told, people want to be told of rewards.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  People want to be told the ways to be happy, to be happier, and to be more cheerful, to be more beautiful. This point is important. Every advertising campaign depends on its psychology. Success or failure is determined by the right or wrong appeal. Folks give little thought to warding off disasters. Their main ambition is to attain more success, more happiness, more beauty, more cheer. I recognize that fundamental belief. I've never referred to disasters. I have never pictured the afflicted. Every illustration I've ever used, rather, showed attractive people and beautiful teeth." And he says, "I made for myself a million dollars on Pepsodent." This is insane amount of money at this time in history, by the way. "Just because I learned the right human psychology."

• 42:21Speaker 00

  And then one of my favorite maxims that I've come across is that genius has the fewest moving parts. What I love about Claude Hopkins, and this speaks to also Albert Lasker, because Albert Lasker made more money in everybody advertising, like I've told you a few times already, but he also did it in a simple way. He didn't have art departments, he didn't have all this staff. His whole thing was like, "Well, if I can just write the best, if I can find the best copywriting that increases sales, that's the only thing my business has to do." And so he just hired the best copywriters in the world and let them write copy that made sales, and then they made all the money. And he wouldn't even make them work in the office. So, and many times, Hopkins has a, like a country house, and he was talking about earning, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  So that'd be making, you know, 20, 30 million, something like that, in today's dollars. It's just a lot of money. And he says, "It was all earned at a typewriter, which I operated myself, without a clerk or a secretary." That's incredible. And then he talks about how he learned how to do this. "How have I been able to win from this situation so many great successes? Simply because I made so many mistakes in a small way, and learned something from each. I made no mistake twice. Every once in a while, I developed some great advertising principle that endured. That method cost me an enormous amount of time, more time than other men are apt to devote. Much more time and much more sacrifice than other men are apt to devote. That is the purpose of this autobiography, to help other men start where I ended."

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Goes back to one of his maxims, that you should forget yourself entirely. "I have seen many an ad killed by a single unfortunate phrase, usually a selfish phrase. Phrases like insist on buying this brand, avoid imitations, look out for substitution. Such appeals have no good effect, and they indicate a motive with which buyers cannot sympathize. Forget yourself entirely. Seek in every word to increase your good impression. Say only what you think a good salesman should say if that prospect stood before him. Do not boast," he repeats that over and over again, "do not boast. Not about anything more interesting to you than your prospect. Boasting is repulsive."

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Another thing that all the great advertisers and copywriters through history will repeat is, once you have an ad that works, stick to it, stop changing it, stop jumping around. They say this over and over again. You see people, modern day people make this mistake over and over again. The, the way that David Ogilvy summarized this for me, and I never forgot, he says, "You're not advertising to a standing army, you're advertising to a moving parade." Claude Hopkins says, "The advertising man clings to the methods he established. He fears to change." He's talking about the good people. "As a matter of fact, it's seldom wise to change. The best way to win new customers is usually the way that won millions. But the advertising becomes monotonous to the men who read every ad. They always come to want something new." So his whole point is like, you should stick with what you're working, stick with what is working.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Don't let that, your impression cloud its effectiveness. You're reading every single ad, but your customers are not. You're advertising, you aren't advertising to standing army, you're advertising to a moving parade. Then he also talks about the fact that if you're staying close to the money, and you're increasing sales, you will be very, very rich. But you have to capture the value you help create. So he talks about with Pepsodent toothpaste, he's like, "Hey, I know my copywriting and my advertising is going to increase your sales, and I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is." So he goes, "I bought shares at the beginning of the project for $13,000, okay? So, I'm, I'm gonna put up 13 grand, I'm gonna buy your own, buy your shares, right? And my advertising is gonna make them more valuable." That 13,000 for that, those shares, it paid him $200,000 in dividends,

• 45:58Speaker 00

  and then he also sold that, that 13,000 many years later for 500 grand. Goes back to the importance of focusing, of spending more hours, focused on one thing. If you have this singular focus, like Claude Hopkins had, you will derive insights to the people that did not dedicate all the time and effort and midnight oil that you did. They'll never get the same knowledge, they won't have the same insights, they just will not have the same effectiveness as you do. "I've always been an addict to work. I love work as other men love play. It is both my occupation and my recreation. As a boy, the necessity for self-support after school hours kept me from the playgrounds. As a man, my desire to learn all that I could about salesmanship has kept me from wasting time. The only game I ever learned is business. To me, it has been all absorbing."

• 46:43Speaker 00

  And then I reference that Claude just writes in a very simple way. He doesn't kind of hide his points from you at all. He has a chapter in Scientific Advertising that's called "Just Salesmanship." And that's, he's like, "That's all advertising is." Advertising is salesmanship. Its principles are the principles of salesmanship. Thus, every advertising question should be answered by the salesman's standards. Advertising is multiplied salesmanship. It may appeal to thousands while the salesman will talk to one. A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your business. Mediocre advertising affects it all." And so he continues, "There's one simple and right way to answer many advertising questions. Ask yourself, would this help a salesman sell the goods? Would it help me sell if I met the buyer in person? Some tell you to be very brief, that people will read, but they'll read very little.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Would you say that to a salesman? With prospects standing in front of him, would you confine him to a certain number of words? That would be an unthinkable handicap. Consider them as prospects standing before you." So it goes back to, again, that idea, advertising and salesmanship. All your ads should be like directed to one person as if that person was standing in front of you. They've expressed interest already, right? That's what your headline grabbed them or your, the image that you use grabbed them. Now that you have their attention, how would you talk to them if it's just one person? Don't speak to them in mass. Don't consider them in mass. I love this idea. Consider them as prospects standing before you, seeking information. Give them enough to get action. So this idea of like, hey, everybody says they're not going to read, or they won't listen to watch a commercial, whatever the

• 48:10Speaker 00

  case is, like, people will give time to what they're interested in if you make it interesting too. And the line that Claude Hopkins uses on this, that David Ogilvy would repeat is that the more you tell, the more you sell. In fact, in some cases, their most successful ads are like 15,000 words long, but it's an interesting story, interesting information about a product that the person's already indicated interest in because they, they read the headline and decided to read the body copy. Do not think of people in mass. It's like, over and over again, just says the same stuff. Think of a typical individual who's likely to want what you sell. Money spending is a serious matter. Do not boast. He said that before. Don't try to show off. Do what you think a good salesman should

• 48:52Speaker 00

  do with a half sold person before him. The advertising man studies the consumer. He tries to place himself in the position of the buyer. His success largely depends on doing that to the exclusion of everything else. Now he has another chapter, or in Scientific Advertising, which is if you buy the, his audio book, he includes Scientific Advertising in the back of this book. And he has a chapter, again, the chapters are very simple, and I think it really illustrates the principles that he think are, he thinks are very important, and the ones that he learned for decades of experience. Offer service. Service, service, service. Remember that people you address are selfish. We all are. They care nothing about your interest or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this

• 49:33Speaker 00

  fact is a common mistake and it's very costly in advertising. Ads say in effect, buy my brand. Give me the trade you give others. Let me have the money. This is not a popular appeal. The best ads ask no one to buy. The ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information. They cite advantages to users. Some of these ads can seem altruistic, but they are based on a knowledge of human nature. The writers of those ads know how people are led to buy. The good salesman does not say, buy my product. He pictures the customer side of his service until the natural result is to buy. And so he gives this example, at the time, this guy made hairbrushes, right? And his distribution strategies, he hired 2,000 door to door salespeople, but they didn't knock on the door and say,

• 50:16Speaker 00

  hey, look, I have a brush. Do you want, you know, try to brush your hair. It brushes your hair better. It does X, Y, Z. This is very fascinating. So he says, he is enormously successful in an industry which would seem very difficult. And it would be if his men asked the housewives to buy. Remember, he said, the best ads ask no one to buy. But they don't. They go door to door and say, I was sent here to give you a brush. I have samples here and I want you to take your choice. In picking out one brush, she sees several that she wants. She's also anxious to reciprocate the gift. So the salesman gets an order. And this is the summary of the chapter. People can be coaxed, but not driven. Whatever they do, they do to please themselves. Many fewer mistakes would be

• 50:59Speaker 00

  made in advertising if these facts were not forgotten. You know how it's funny, how he says, hey, don't change your ads, just repeat it over and over again. The best way to get new customers is the way that you got the customers before them. The fact that he just repeats these ideas. He used the same idea because he just repeats them, these same ideas over and over again throughout the book. And so a few pages later, he says, the motto is, the more you tell, the more you sell. It has never failed to prove out in any test we know. It's almost like he's like, wondering if you're paying attention. Because he'll say the same idea. Sometimes he uses different words, but it'll illustrate the same concept over and over again. And then he gets to headlines, and this is what sparked my initial interest. And it's like, you know, I'm obsessed with the, the best and most memorable way to essentially distill down an idea, which I think you and I do

• 51:44Speaker 00

  a lot on this podcast together. One of the things that I stumbled upon was when I was reading the, the autobiography, The Four Seasons, the founder of Four Seasons, Isidore Sharp. And he described, you know, he talks about the process of, of building one of the most valuable and historic brands of all time, companies of all time. And he kind of summarizes in one word for us. He says, excellence is the capacity to take pain. And if you read that book, really is just all the pain that he had to persevere through to get to the other side of this thing. And he started, wanted to build, he had this ridiculous idea at the time, where other people thought ridiculous, like, I'm going to build the most premier luxury hotel brand in the world, and I've never built a hotel before. So it was obviously between that thought and the realization of that dream is going to be a lot of pain. And a lot of people obviously run from that pain and can't

• 52:28Speaker 00

  persevere through. So excellence is the capacity to take pain. And so, what spawned me, and I had this idea, I was thinking about it this week, about why I wanted to read Scientific Advertising, was for Claude Hopkins insights on headlines. And so this is the chapter on headlines. The purpose of a headline is to pick out people you could interest. You wish to talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, hey there, Bill Jones, to get the right person's attention. Headlines on ads are like headlines on news items. Nobody reads a whole newspaper. We pick out what we wish to read by headlines, and we don't want those headlines to be misleading. The writing of headlines is one of the greatest journalistic arts. They either conceal or reveal an interest. Always bear these facts

• 53:09Speaker 00

  in mind. People are hurried. They want to be amused or benefited. There may be products which interest them more than anything else, but they will never know it unless the headline tells them. The writer of this chapter, meaning himself, spends far more time on headlines than on writing. Ogilvy said the same thing. He said something like, 80, 80 or 90% of people will read the headline than the body copy. So therefore it follows that you should spend the majority of your time writing the headline, right? So he says, I spend more for, more time on headlines than on writing. I often spend hours on a single headline. Often scores of headlines are discarded before the right one is selected. For the entire

• 53:53Speaker 00

  return from an ad depends on attracting the right sort of readers. The best of salesmanship has no chance, whatever, unless we get a hearing. So, his point is that, what's the point of explaining your product or describing the benefits, right? The headline gets them interested. It is the door that opens up so they come inside and they actually, like, read and, and, or in this case, listen or watch, or whatever the case is, about your product, right? The way I think about this, and why it has to be entertaining and can't be misleading, oh, David Ogilvy has another great maxim. He says, we can't save souls in an empty church. Right? This is what infuriates me about other, like, business podcasts, for example. I think entrepreneurship is the most fascinating subject in the world.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  I think founders, people that create things that did not exist in the world are the most important people in the world. It is, there are all kinds of crazy characters and stories and fascinating ideas they have, and the way they live their lives. It's insane. I'm still, this podcast was started next month. So September 2016 was when I started founders. So that's what, a month from next month, it'll be 10 years. I'm still, I'm more interested in entrepreneurship today than I was when I started. I don't think I'll ever not be interested in. How the hell you make that subject boring? It's insane to me. So you can't save souls in an empty church. We can educate and inspire, right? But like, the first thing you have to do is entertain before you educate and inspire. So I think that's what they're hitting at here. It's like, you have to figure out what is the headline? What is the hook that's going to get people interested in what you want to teach them

• 55:22Speaker 00

  about? And in his case, like, he's writing for, for products. Those products, all product is, is an idea that's make somebody else's life better. So spend a lot of time figuring out what that main appeal is to your, your, your, your prospect, your, the customer that you want to actually buy. You, and you do that, obviously, through a lot of research. He talks about that a lot, too. But the reason this is so important, and I think, what's one of the best examples of this? When he just said, hey, you know, spend so much time on a single headline, the entire return could depend on just attracting the right person? And you do that through the headline? I don't know why, but when I read that, I think of what Steve Jobs did with iPod. He, it's like, he explained the entire value prop in a handful

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  of words. Thousand songs in your pocket. That piques you up. It gets me interested. What? I want a thousand songs in my pocket? How is that even possible? What'd you make? Then I'll listen to your whole presentation and I'll watch the product demo, or read the ad, or whatever the case is. I think that's really, really fascinating. So, again, salesmanship has no chance whatsoever unless we get a hearing. You can't save souls in an empty church. The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in its returns. It's not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns from five to 10 times over. So Claude Hopkins says, changing the headline can multiply returns by five to 10 times. In Ogilvie's books, which are written probably two or three decades after this one, he says, he's seen 19 to one difference. It's insane. Returns vary enormously

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  due to headlines. Address the people you seek and them only. He will return to this idea later. Then he talks about psychology, which he, again, he has entire chapters on this. This is very, very important. The competent advertising man must understand psychology. Human nature is perpetual. It is the same today, in today's time, as it was in the time of Caesar. So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring. You will never need to unlearn what you learned about them. We learn, for instance, that curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives. We employ it whenever we can. So, then he gives some examples of these psychological quirks that will endure, and then you'll see over and over again. People judge things largely by price.

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  So he gives this example where this painting was announced that it costs $750,000. Before you tell people that that painting costs $750,000, which at the time, you know, would be, let's say, 100 million today, I'm just making the number up, but a big number, right? Says, "Most people pass it by, don't even give it a second glance." Then you tell them, "Hey, that painting's 750 grand." And they learn what the painting costs, they return and then surround it. It actually creates a crowd because it's so expensive. Another thing that he found was that we are tribal by nature and we like to belong to groups. So, he says, "It is found that if an offer is limited to a certain class of people, it is far more effective than a general offer.

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  For instance, an offer limited to veterans of the war, or to members of a lodge, or to executives, those who are entitled to any seemingly advantage by being part of a group, will go a long way not to lose that advantage." Another one, "An identical offer," and then he makes this point again, about why, like, again, just slightly different positioning on the same ad is so important because these things are very important. "An identical offer made in different ways may bring multiplied returns." And that could be through something like changing the headline, could be changing the way it's presented, it could be changing the fact that it needs to belong to a specific group, or it could even be more expensive. Another way to increase and multiply the returns of your advertising is you be specific.

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  Use actual numbers, and he gives great examples here. So, you'll see this, like, "Hey," you know, you go into some town, it's like, "We're the best cheesecake in the world," or something like that. Says, "Platitude and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck. They have no impression whatsoever. To say best in the world, lowest prices, etc., are all, at best, simply claiming the expected. A definitive statement is usually accepted, however. Actual figures are not generally discounted. Specific facts have their full weight and effect. The weight of an argument may often be multiplied by making it specific." So he gives the example, a lot of people would sell clothing, for example, and they would say, "Hey, we have the lowest prices in America." That's not really an effective appeal.

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  One guy who was selling a bunch of clothing says, "My net profit is 3%." That was a definitive statement and it proved very impressive. So again, essentially illustrating the same idea, like, "We have really low prices, we're saying low prices in America, okay, I only make 3% profit." If you're a customer, it's like, "Okay, that's pretty wild." That means they're barely scraping by, I probably can't get this article of clothing for cheaper than anybody else that's essentially selling at almost no profit margin. Gives another example of people, a lot of different people are selling razors to shave your face. "Many makers of razors have long advertised quick shaves. One maker advertised a 78-second shave. That was the definitive statement. It indicated actual test results.

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  That man made a sensational advance in his sales." And then he goes back to the importance of headlines, and this is a great way of summarizing his main idea. "Your main appeal should lie in your headline. Whatever promise, the best promise that you have, which is the actual benefit that the customer gets from using your product, make sure it's in the headline." Go back to Steve Jobs, "1,000 songs in your pocket." His main appeal was in the headline. And then he ends with effort. "An ad writer to have his chance of success must gain full information on his subject. A painstaking advertising man will often read for weeks on some problem which comes up.

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  Perhaps in many volumes he will find few facts to use, but some one fact may be the keystone of his success. To advertise a toothpaste, this writer has also read many volumes of scientific matter that was dry as dust, but in the middle of one volume, he found the idea, which has helped make millions for that toothpaste maker. Genius is the art of taking pains." That is too good not to say again. "Genius is the art of taking pains. The advertising man who spares the midnight oil will never get very far." Let me interrupt this, where he says, "Hey, I'm reading through volume after volume of this scientific matter, it's dry as dust, it's boring, but I just found one single

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  sentence, one idea, that was the basis, the cornerstone of this advertising campaign that made my customer, my client, millions." Ogilvy had the same thing happen, he was reading through hundreds of pages, if I remember correctly, about his customer Rolls Royce, and he said it was like some obscure engineering document, wasn't even meant for consumption of advertising, wasn't even meant to be seen by the outside world. And he found a line that was the basis for one of his most successful advertising campaigns of all time, and it says, "At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock. Genius is the art of taking pain. The advertising man who spares the midnight oil will never get very far.

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  An advertising campaign is usually preceded by a very large volume of data. The uninformed would be staggered to know the amount of work involved in a single ad, weeks of work. The ad seems so simple, and it must be simple to appeal, but back of that ad may lie reams of data, volumes of information, and months of research. This is no lazy man's field." And that is where I'll leave it. Highly recommend reading both his autobiography, My Life in Advertising, and his book on advertising called Scientific Advertising, that is 430 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.