How to Write Ads That Sell

Key Takeaway

Before writing your next ad, replace every claim about your company with a specific benefit for one clearly defined customer. Research what that person wants, the problem they already feel, and the proof behind your product; then put the strongest promise in the headline. Avoid vague superlatives such as “best” or “lowest.” Use concrete details, demonstrations, numbers, and an offer that lets interested people experience the value with low risk.

Episode Overview

This episode distills Claude Hopkins’s lessons from "Scientific Advertising" and "My Life in Advertising," with connections to David Ogilvy, Estée Lauder, and other business builders. The central argument is that advertising is salesmanship at scale: effective ads serve a specific customer, prove a tangible benefit, rely on research and testing, and speak with the clarity of a great salesperson in a one-to-one conversation.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How to Write Ads That Sell from Founders. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

This book is not written as a personal story, but as a story about business. I try to focus only on instructive things. The main goal of each episode is to give useful advice to those who will follow me and save them from the nightly groping that I went through. Anyone who, through hard work throughout their lives, learns more about something than others owes an explanation to their successors. The results of the research should be recorded. Every pioneer must pave his own path. That's all I was trying to do.

My only claim is that I have probably worked twice as long as anyone else in this field. I lived in a whirlwind of advertising for many years. Of course, I learned more from this experience than those who had fewer opportunities. I want this experience to help others avoid the same difficult path. I have presented these conclusions solely with the aim of helping others begin their journey from the heights I have already conquered. If someone had left a note like this when I was starting out, I would have been very grateful.

So, this is Claude Hopkins writing the foreword to his autobiography, titled "My Life in Advertising." When you buy this book, you are actually getting a second book that he wrote, perhaps four decades before his autobiography, called "Scientific Advertising." So, I actually reread these books, I read both of these books for the first time, I don't know, probably about five years ago. And I found them because one of my personal heroes is a guy named David Ogilvy. And David Ogilvy said that he actually laid the foundation of his giant advertising agency based solely on the work of Claude Hopkins.

And I originally intended to write. Here's a crazy story. This will explain everything I want to talk to you about today. So , there's a book written by Claude Hopkins called "Scientific Advertising," okay? It sold about 8-10 million copies. This is probably the most important book ever written about advertising, considering who read it and what influence it had afterwards. The book was so valuable that when Claude first wrote it, he showed it to the founder of the firm he worked for. This man's name is Albert Lasker.

Now this is very important to understand because Albert Lasker is the person who made the most money in advertising of all time. Albert Lasker read the book and told Claude Hopkins: “ Absolutely not. You will not publish this book." This is the revelation of all our secrets. You'll have to wait until I make all this money. Albert Lasker put the book in a safe for 20 years. When Albert Lasker finished, uh, left his advertising agency, I think he gave it to some of his employees, and then Claude Hopkins was allowed to publish a book called "Scientific Advertising," which in the last, you know, 100 years, because I think the book came out sometime in the 1920s, maybe 1930s , something like that.

Uh, it sold , you know, almost 10 million copies, you know? So this week I thought, "Oh, I wanted to focus on headlines, and actually how you can isolate the most important idea in the maximum amount of text, which, as you know, I'm crazy about." Uh, and how do I apply this to headlines? Because for my other show, the new show that I launched last year, where I actually talk to some of the greatest founders of our time, a lot of the value in these conversations is condensed into little snippets of three, four, six minutes.

And personally, I read "Science Advertising" to better learn how to compress the main idea of ​​a three-minute clip into one sentence, which would essentially serve as the title for that clip, you know? And I decided: "I will read this book in its entirety." " I finished reading " Science Advertising" and thought, 'Damn it, this is cool.'" "And that made me go back and start...I didn't plan on doing this episode the way I'm doing it now ." And then I went back and reread his autobiography, which I hadn't planned to talk to you about today .

I was only going to tell you about "Science Advertising ". Damn it, there's too much useful stuff here. So I went back, gathered all my notes and highlights into one book that I just finished working on. I spent , you know, the last, I don't know, 10 hours or so . This took a long time. I have collected all my notes and highlighted passages from both books into the one I hold in my hands. This is what I will discuss with you today. Actually no , I missed large parts of his personal life and history.

I just want to tell you that this guy probably spent more time. He is probably the best copywriter in history. And he spent more time on it than anyone else. And there are these principles and a small number of ideas that he repeats over and over again . And I think it will really help you sell better, promote better, advertise better any product that you create. So let's get straight to the point. He says, "I've been self- supporting since I was nine years old. He started working 16 hours a day when he was still in high school, you know?

And the reason why that's important is because he applied that to when he started in the advertising business. I did the same thing in business. I didn't have a work schedule. If I finished by midnight, that was my day off. I often left the office at 2 a.m. Sundays were my best days of work because no one bothered me. In the 16 years since I started the business, I rarely had an evening or a Sunday without work. I don't advise others to follow my example. But a person who works twice as long as others is bound to achieve twice as much, especially in advertising.

Of course, there is a difference in intelligence, but it is not as important as a difference in hard work. A person who does two or three times as much work as others learns in two or three times more. She makes more mistakes and she achieves more, and she learns from both. If I've achieved more in advertising or done more, it's not because of exceptional ability, but because of exceptional hours. So I'm going to interrupt myself, because I have in my hands , you know, 300 or maybe 320 pages of the most important lessons learned from working 16 hours a day for five decades.

He says, " The fact is, if I've achieved more than anyone else, it's not because my brain was bigger, or because of exceptional ability, but simply because I put in an exceptional number of hours." He says, "It means that a person" -- he's talking about himself -- "it means that a person has sacrificed everything else in life to excel in this one profession. And so I got to this point, I must have read this excerpt, I don't know, maybe half a dozen times in my life.

The one thing that caught my eye was one of Charlie Munger's favorite founders, a guy named Les Schwab. And Les Schwab did essentially the same thing that Claude Hopkins did in his day. In the ad, Les did it , building one of the most successful tire center chains in the history of the United States. And he says, "Whatever you do, you've got to do it with enthusiasm. You've got to do it in large quantities. It's a case of repeat, repeat, repeat." He talks about how his mother was widowed when Claude Hopkins was 10 years old , and how he grew up in poverty.

And he says, " I owe it to poverty that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of life, not the school of theory." And one of the most important lessons he learned in the school of life and theory was from a railroad foreman . Which is, it's important to make the most of every hour of the day and to treat your work like a game. I'm going to... You'll notice today that I'm repeating myself: he probably has half a dozen ideas that he just repeats over and over.

And he repeats them in both books. And keep in mind that these books were written 30 or 40 years apart. So the idea of ​​treating work like a game and making the most of every hour of the day is a theme that Claude will repeat over and over again. He says that this man had a tremendous influence on him. He was a railroad foreman. Claude was still very young at the time . The foreman was a little older and seemed to be teaching Claude the lessons of life.

wisdom. He says he was struck by the difference between the foreman and his assistants. The assistants worked only out of necessity. They did the least they could. They counted the hours until the end of the shift, and on Saturday evening they went into town and spent all the money they had earned in the week. The foreman, on the other hand, worked with enthusiasm. He says the men worked as if the work were boring, but the foreman turned it into a game. This man built his house in the evenings after a 10- hour day on the railroad.

He tended a garden around it. Then he married the most beautiful girl in the county and lived a happy life. I learned wonderful lessons from him. And then he tells me how he reflects on this conversation he had with that railroad foreman . "Look at these guys, planing sticks, discussing railroads, chatting about politics. The most any of them know about railroad—it's like hammering in a crutch. They'll always do that and nothing more. Notice what I did while they were idle in the evening —built most of the porch of their house.

"So he's been working all day, and then he's just trying to improve his position in life again. I'm going to finish it on my own house. I've finished the railroad, now I can improve something important to me, something that's going to last a long time in my life—my house." And he goes on. So, you know, they're idle there, grinding nonsense, and I'm building, I'm making better use of the time. I'm building this porch, enlarging it, and making my house more valuable. Soon I'll be sitting on this porch in comfort, hugging a beautiful wife.

They'll be sitting on their soapboxes forever. What's work and what's play? If a thing is useful, they call it work. If useless— called a game. But one is as hard as the other. One can be the same game as the other. In both cases there can be rivalry. There is a struggle to achieve the best. All the difference I see is in the mental attitude. That is the end of the quotation from the railroad yard foreman. Let us return to Claude, who writes in his autobiography.

I have never forgotten these conversations. I loved work as other people love golf. I still love it. I often gave up bridge, dinner, or dancing to spend an evening in the office. I would escape from weekend parties in my country house to enjoy a few hours at the typewriter . So the love of work can be cultivated just as much as the love of play. The two concepts are interchangeable. What others call work, I call play, and vice versa. We do best what we love best.

Well, is n't it funny, huh? So this a guy named Claude dedicated his life to studying advertising. Last week we talked about another Claude, Claude Shannon, who also dedicated his life to work. He's known for creating information theory, of course, but he also invented the first wearable computer. He's just an incredibly important figure. And again , what was the name of Claude Shannon's biography? "Mind at Play ." But it's interesting that they both saw work as play, and even more interestingly, there's a direct quote in Claude Shannon's biography where he says that the best things we do are the things we love to do.

And we see Claude Hopkins saying the same thing that Claude Shannon says. If it's chasing a polo ball, a person will succeed at it. If it means checking the competition or hitting a home run, a person will succeed at it . So it means a lot when a young person starts to see their work as the most exciting game they know. It great, and that's how it should be. It's just a fantastic piece, and that's how it should be. Applause in sports dies down quickly. But success follows a person to the grave.

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Okay. So now we're going back to... I was going to say we're going back to his advertising ideas, but this is about his father passing away and his mother being a widow. So they're trying to figure out ways to survive through hardship, okay? And his mother starts making a homemade silver cleaner. So, at one point, for a lot of housewives, you know, there were a lot of things, like serving food or drinks on silver trays. And so, his mother came up with a way to make silver shine, you know?

And so, as a kid, he was like 10 or 11 years old, he would walk from the door door to door trying to sell this silver polish that his mother basically made at home, right? He says, "I went door to door selling this." I found that I sold to about one woman out of ten just by talking about this remedy. But when I could get into a home and demonstrate its operation, I sold to almost everyone. This taught me another lesson that I have never forgotten.

A good product sells itself . It's hard to sell products without samples. So this is again an idea that he will repeat over and over again . What a great demonstration of the product, letting someone use it for free or something. This is very, very important. Now, if you remember, one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time is Estée Lauder . I think I read Estée Lauder's autobiography three or four times. I probably did two or three episodes about this book, if memory serves. And when she first started, she didn't have much money.

So when she and her husband started the company, they thought, " Okay, we have this advertising budget, right ? But we don't have a lot of customers. We know we've created a great product." So, Estee essentially made the idea of ​​giving away free samples the cornerstone of her empire . So she took the money from the advertising budget and decided, "Hey, I'm going to move this money from advertising to manufacturing because I'm on a tight budget right now , and I'm going to make more products not to sell, but to give away." She talked about people, and she stopped people on the street.

She did this, of course, even when she had stores. But she said that the advantage of this is, firstly, that the product speaks for itself. If you believe you have the best product, then you will win because of this one factor. But it is human nature to want to reciprocate. So Estee walks up to the woman and says, "Here, try this lipstick. Try this blush." Whatever the situation. She tries it. She likes it. Not only will she return to Este to buy what she got for free, but she will also tell all her friends about it.

This is real "word of mouth ". I forgot what she called it. In her autobiography, she called it, I think, " call a friend." But she knew she would be doing this for the rest of her life, and she understood that “word of mouth” would become the engine of the business she tried to build over the next decades . I like to return to this book precisely because the author writes in a very simple and clear way. It's like, "Here's another lesson, pay attention to it ." He literally says, "Here's another lesson." We should never judge humanity by ourselves.

What we want, what we like, may only appeal to a small minority. The advertising losses due to reliance on personal preferences could easily cover the national debt. Opinions are divided on every issue, so only stubborn and narrow-minded people will rely on their own opinions. We must submit everything in advertising to the court of public opinion. This is the main theme of this book. I have an ocean-going yacht, but do you think I would set out on the ocean without a map or compass? This is another idea.

He already mentioned something . He says, “Well, you know , sometimes I’m in a country house and I want to get away from everyone. "Everyone else is having fun, and I'm sitting at the typewriter." And now he adds: “By the way, I also have a yacht. How do you think I got it? Sitting at the typewriter and choosing words that make the cash register ring, okay? There's a subtext there that you don't know about until you read the book— it has one idea. He started as an accountant.

And he thought, " The problem is that I'm on the cost side of the business." And he asked himself: "Who is making money here?" He decided, "If I stop being an expense for the business owner and become the one who brings him more sales, I'll get paid because I can say, 'Hey, I brought you over a million dollars in profit from selling toothpaste.'" Give me $200,000 of the million I brought. So his main advice to young men, and probably young women too, is: “Stay away from the expense side of business.

Stay close to the money. " Stay close to the money." Let's go back to the part where he talks about this. He says, “You have to study human nature. There are a lot of things, products that you think about...He emphasizes the importance of testing over and over again. He says, "You know how many times I've been brought a product and I've thought, ' Why should I advertise this crap? It'll never sell.'" He does everything he can, and the product sells at a crazy pace because he didn't understand the market.

He says: “It didn’t appeal to me, but the world is huge. There are billions of people, and they are attracted to it.” He says, “Some of the greatest successes I’ve ever known were in advertising ”—oh, that’s funny. So, he also talks about hiring staff and people who worked under him . In fact, you will achieve much more if you simply understand human nature. He talks about the importance of studying psychology, understanding incentives, what drives people, and understanding that there is something in human nature that never changes.

He tried to hire very ordinary, uneducated people for his company. You could say that these people were smart in life. They had almost no academic knowledge, but they knew exactly how people think, what motivates them, and how to convince them to buy the products they were selling. So he mentions two of them here. Some of the greatest successes I have ever known in advertising were achieved by ignorant people. Two of them now head the agencies. One of them made a lot of money in advertising. A man who could barely sign, but he knew people, and people bought what he had to offer.

One of them was writing a text that could persuade a farmer to pawn his barn for a purchase, but every sentence had to be edited for grammar. This is another thing he will repeat over and over again . Make sure you understand. He reads a lot of history, a lot of psychology, a lot of philosophy, he understands people. It says: "No man will succeed in a matter where he feels discord and where the result is unhappiness." I consider business a game. How many times, back on page 34 of this book, have I already mentioned this at least once.

This must have come up four times by the time I got to this point. I consider business a game and I play it like a game. That's why I was and remain so devoted to him. This brings us back to what Claude Shannon said last week. You tend to love and be good at the things you enjoy. Charlie Munger's version of this is this: passion for any subject is indispensable if you really want to succeed at it. When I first heard it from Charlie or read him say it, it sounds like, "Love what you do or find another job." And again , because you'll be...It's all the little things on the edge where you think, "Okay, I can work eight hours a day at a job I don't like, or eight hours a day at something I love." And even if you limit yourself to just those eight hours, you'll be thinking about it in your free time.

You 'll read, you know , professional publications about it. You will seek out other people and build relationships with those who are interested in the same things as you. It's just that this love is so important. I've already mentioned this, but the importance of being close to money. He says that big salaries are paid to salespeople, those who bring in orders, or people in the factory who cut costs. They can increase profits, and if you can show profits, then you can claim a reasonable share of those profits.

All of them, when I was reading...I probably did six to ten different episodes about all the founders of advertising agencies, most of which I found thanks to David Ogilvy. But they all talk about there being a plan or someone they learned from, whose ideas they then used to build their company. Claude Hopkins is no different. He was very fond of a man named John Powers. And what he took away from studying the advertising that John Powers created was Powers' main principle: tell the truth. You just need to tell it in an interesting and captivating way.

So, it says: “John Powers created a new concept in advertising. He spoke the truth, but he did so in a crude and captivating manner. “He had a time when he worked for Wonamaker. And this company paid John Powers $12,000 a year. So keep in mind, this is the early 1900s. That's just an insanely high salary. And he says, “The principles that John Powers stood for are still one of our advertising foundations. “And so he gives an example of one of the most interesting things that John Powers did.

So, this clothing company was on the verge of bankruptcy, they call Powers, he assesses the situation instantly, and this is what he says. He says, “There is only one way out. Tell the truth. Tell people that you are bankrupt and that your only way to salvation lies through large and immediate sales. "The clothing sellers argue that such an announcement will bring all the creditors to them , but Powers replied that it doesn't matter. Either tell the truth, or I'm leaving. So, it's the same advertisement. OK?

So the ad went something like this . We went bankrupt. We owe $125,000 more than we can pay. This announcement will bring creditors upon us, but if you come and buy tomorrow, we will have the money to pay. If not, we will go bankrupt. Here are the prices we are setting to deal with this situation. They say that truth was so rare in advertising that this ad caused a sensation. Thousands of people rushed to shop, and the store was saved. And before we get back to that, I want to tell you about AppLovin.

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This is a retention rate that surpasses any other advertising platform. And you can get started on AppLovin in minutes. You set a goal, and AppLovin achieves it. No complicated settings or special knowledge required. And AppLovin is scaling quickly. They can place your ads in front of over a billion potential customers . Other companies saw instant results, scaling spending to hundreds of thousands of dollars per day and increasing profits by millions. So, you want to get started quickly before all your competitors have switched to AppLovin. And you can do that by going to applovin.com.

This is applovin.com. And now I want to tell you about Vanta. Vanta, Vanta, Vanta. Vanta helps your company prove its security so that more customers use your product or service. Vanta is an AI-powered security expert that grows with you. As your business grows, your security needs become more complex, and that complexity turns into chaos. Vanta will tame this chaos for you. Vanta automates compliance, continuously monitors your processes, and provides a single source of truth for risk assessment. So whether you're a fast-growing startup or a large corporation, Vanta fits easily into your workflows.

Many companies will not sign contracts without certification, and this causes you to lose sales. That's why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment after starting with them. Automate your compliance , security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta will help you gain trust, close deals, and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com/founders and you'll get $1,000 off . This is vanta.com/founders . Another recurring theme in this book is how much more effort Claude puts in than anyone else. Even when he wasn't rich yet.

This is how he tried to start his business. He learns about this company...The story in the book is stretched over many pages. I'll just give you a brief overview. So, one of the companies, which at that time had one of the largest advertising budgets in the US, was looking for an advertising manager. Claude learns about this vacancy and doesn't do what normal people do. He doesn't say, "Okay, I'll apply." "Or maybe I'll call or knock on the door to try to talk to him in person or something ." Claude does all of this, but also asks dozens of people to send letters to the hiring manager to confirm his skills as a copywriter and advertising executive.

Then he starts writing a daily column in the newspaper about advertising, sharing everything he has learned so that the person responsible for hiring can see it. And, of course, you know the end result. Claude will be the one who gets the job. Another thing he keeps repeating: you shouldn't have any distance between yourself and the end buyer. If you are right next to them, you can hear and see what they are rejecting and see what makes their eyes light up. You need to be closer to the buyer.

His main point, and this is what many ad agency founders said, is that the best were traveling salesmen and direct response advertisers. That's why he says to study, and even remembers how he spent his time before electric lighting appeared. You know, the people who gathered in the town square. He said he stood for hours by torchlight listening to some of these " miracle cure salesmen," like Rockefeller's father, if you've studied Rockefeller history. His father traveled around the cities selling literal "snake oil," such as remedies for eternal life or a cure for cancer if you drink it.

They would stand on the box and try to preach and sell their wares. Claude said he stood for hours by the light of the torches, listening and observing what arguments worked on them . So the advice is to be as close to the end buyer as possible. So study the salespeople, the agitators, and the scammers if you want to know how to sell goods. No argument in the world can compare to one dramatic demonstration. Another thing he keeps repeating is, to quote Henry Ford, one of my favorite rules in the history of entrepreneurship: " Money comes naturally as a result of service." I see this all the time.

You can look at the advertising, I especially notice it when I fly into San Francisco. I'm recording a lot there now. And you look at the billboards. They have the worst ones—the companies with the highest market value, but they have the worst billboards, because they only say "me, me, me, me." Buy my product. And his whole idea is that no one cares about your company. Nobody cares about your product . You should create ads not about yourself, your product, or your company, but about what you can do for them.

This is a basic understanding of selling. Here's what Claude Hopkins says. The average salesperson is looking for a profit. He seeks profit for himself. His appeal is " buy my goods." He makes a selfish appeal to selfish people, and, of course, he meets resistance. I sold services. So, he talks about some of the successes he achieved early in his career. He says: "I sold services." The whole point of my conversations was to help them get more business. My own benefit was disguised as my efforts to please the client.

Any good sales art, which he considers advertising. He says that advertising is simply the art of selling in print. Any good sales art is based on a service offering. Repeats this over and over again. He will repeat this dozens of times in the book. This is not an exaggeration. Everywhere we see advertisers who just shout their name. They say : "Buy my brand." All they seem to desire is some selfish gain. Such advertising can sometimes bring some profit, but it will never produce the same results as appeals that appear disinterested.

Another of his main lessons and ideas: create your ad as if there was one person standing in front of you. He says: “My constant argument has been against working with people as a mass. For example, one day a woman wrote to us asking about a sewing machine. She thought only about that and nothing else. The general business plan that Hopkins was working on was to send her…So she’s writing a letter asking about a sewing machine that the company sells, right? Before Claude Hopkins arrived, the company responded by sending her a catalog of everything .

He says: “ Treating all requests the same is a big mistake. I insist that everyone who contacts me should be treated like a potential customer who came into the store. We had a special sewing machine catalog with all the models and prices. We were sending this particular sewing machine... So if you're calling, I apologize if you were writing about sewing machines, that's what Claude Hopkins changed, right? We have a catalog dedicated to just that. Shows everything we offer. Shows each model and price. Send this to her, okay?

Then we also sent the names of all the people in her town, in the neighborhood, who had already bought our sewing machine. We asked her, “Hey, go and look at the cars in person if you want, and then talk to the owners about whether they are happy with them .” He says, “This is another valuable principle. We tend to view people as a mass. We must descend to the level of individual personalities . We should treat people in advertising the same way we treat them in person." He's going to say it a million times.

This, I think, is the summary of all that has been said. This is appropriate if you're writing an ad, a headline, making a billboard, or a 30-second commercial for a podcast, for goodness sake. We should treat people in advertising the same way we would in person . Focus on their desires. Now he is combining these ideas. It's not about you. What do they want? Consider the person standing before you with certain expressed desires. No matter how big your business is, focus on individual units, because they are what make up scale.

There is another idea of ​​his that I haven't forgotten since the first time I heard it. This is probably the main idea I learned from him last time. It is that you should talk about the efforts you make to achieve quality and create a product, even if they are not unique to your business. This is fascinating. So, he's hired by the Schlitz brewery , okay? At that time, Schlitz beer ranked fifth in market share. There were four other brands that were selling better, and they hired Hopkins: "Hey, how can you help us increase sales?" He replies, " Okay, the first step in any great ad is research.

I have to understand what your business does, why your product is good, how you create it, and everything else." He goes to their brewery. He says: "I saw glass rooms where beer was flowing down pipes and asked the reason." I was told that these rooms are filled with filtered air to keep the beer cool in a clean environment. I saw huge filters filled with white wood pulp. They explained how it filters beer. They showed how they clean each pump and pipe twice a day to avoid contamination.

Each bottle was mechanically washed four times . I was shown artesian wells 4,000 feet deep for extracting clean water. I was shown the vats where the beer was aged for 6 months before reaching the consumer. They took me to the lab and showed me the original mother yeast cell. It was developed as a result of 1200 experiments to achieve the best taste. Hopkins asks, "Guys, what are you doing? This is amazing. Why haven't you told people about this ? Why are you just trying to shout louder than everyone else that your beer is clean?

Why don't you tell them the reasons?" The company replied, " Well, we use the same processes as everyone else. Nobody can make good beer without it." And this is the most important part of the story. But I replied, "The others have never told this story." This impresses everyone who visits your brewery. This will impress everyone in print. “So he takes what he learned and puts it into advertising. So I depicted in print these glass halls and every other factor of purity. I told a story common to all good brewers, but a story that has never been told.

I gave importance to cleanliness. In a few months, Schlitz rose from fifth place to the level of leader. And he says it doesn't just work for beer, it works for any company, any product. Again and again I have recounted simple facts common to all manufacturers in this industry, too well known to recount, but which have given the product an exceptional and lasting prestige. This situation occurs in many areas. The manufacturer is too close to his product. He sees only mundaneness in his methods . He does not realize that the world at large may be fascinated by these methods, and that facts that seem ordinary to him may quickly single him out.

Tell us about the efforts you make to be the best. And then, a few pages later, he reiterates one of his main ideas: serve better than others, offer more help than others, and you are sure to win. And after a few pages, he returns to the service again. Think only from your customer's perspective. There are other ways to win in sales and advertising, but they are slow and questionable. Ask a person to take a risk for you and you will have a fight. Offer to take a risk for her, and the path will be easy.

So, he gets to the point where he works in advertising, puts in some talent, and then he meets Albert Lasker. This is the guy I mentioned earlier, who Claude will work for for 17 years, it seems, and who hides Claude's original manuscript in his safe. But everyone who met him said he had incredible charisma. This is the guy who made more money from advertising than anyone else. This short story is just too funny, and you can use it as an idea in your business when hiring someone, but it's just how Albert Lasker recruits.

And here it is written: "Mr. Lasker said, 'I have searched the whole country for copies.'" " I mean copywriting, you know?" This is a copy I received in New York. This is the copy I received in Philadelphia. I spent thousands of dollars to get the best text available. You see the result. Neither you nor I would submit this. Now I ask you to help me. Give me three ads that will start this campaign, and your wife can go to Michigan Avenue, pick any car on the street, and I'll pay her bill.

"And then, that's what Claude says." As far as I know, no ordinary person ever resisted Albert Lasker. He controlled everything he wanted in this world. Presidents made him their comrade. Nothing he desired was forbidden to him. So I gave in, like everyone else, to his ability to persuade. “Now, a few pages later, he returns to one of his favorite ideas. This is another important point to consider. Prove anything for your own benefit, and people will resist to the last. But, appear selfless, considering your customers' desires, and they will naturally gravitate towards you.

The two biggest mistakes in advertising are bragging and selfishness. People will listen if you talk to them about the benefits. They will turn away when you try to impose an advantage for yourself. This is important. And again, both of these books—it's just him documenting the mistakes and successes that he sees people make over and over again . We were just talking about Schlitz beer. He's like: This is amazing. Why don't you tell people about this ? And they're like: well, because we do it, but everyone does it.

And he's going to mention that you shouldn't actually write your own ads because you're too close to your own company. And again he ties this idea into another idea, that you should always think from the customer's perspective. This is the main reason why no manufacturer should ever advertise themselves. He is too close to his factory. His own interests prevent him from seeing the interests of his clients. He is unable to understand the client's side. He talks about things he's proud of, like the size of the plant or the age of his business.

The advertiser must study the consumer and tell the consumer what he wants to know. Again, everything is from the customer's perspective. When you hear it over and over again , after you finish listening to it, just look, you know, flip through a magazine, look at a billboard, see any advertisement on social media. It seems like good advertising appeals to you. They talk about what you want. They are from your perspective, and you will be shocked to realize how many companies simply fail to meet this very basic requirement.

Again , these words are in many cases 100 years old. This is not new information. Oh, I like that part. It's just a random thing that I think is related to the circle of competence that Buffett often talks about. And Claude Hopkins sees this in his clients too, when they are very successful with one product and business and think, "Hey, I'm a genius." And so they try to leave and do something completely different and suffer a crushing defeat. He says, "It's interesting how we all strive to succeed in something outside of our own field." This leads many astray .

People make money in one business and lose it in others. They seem to believe that one success makes them super businessmen. So, let me go back to how I found Claude Hopkins many years ago. It had nothing to do with advertising. I read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters. I'm going to do another episode about this. It will probably take me two months, because this book is now a veritable encyclopedia since Warren wrote his last letter to shareholders. So it's just going to take me... it's going to be the longest episode of "Founders" I've ever done.

The last time I did this, it was still my longest episode. It seems like it was an episode from the 80s or something. It lasts about 3 hours. But anyway, many, many years ago I read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters. And he kept calling this guy, David Ogilvy, a genius. I'm like, "What the hell is going on here?" Who is David Ogilvy? So I researched him, read about David Ogilvy, read everything about him, read everything he wrote. And he, like everyone else, will tell you who his heroes were.

And I kind of followed that path. And there's something about this interaction between Buffett, who was a shareholder, because Ogilvy & Mather was a public company, and Buffett buying up shares. In fact, it's quite interesting that Buffett made more money from Ogilvy's company than Ogilvy himself because Ogilvy got scared and sold his stake too early, before it increased in value. This is an interesting fact. But Buffett gave them advice because at that time Ogilvy & Mather was expanding, they were on a real acquisition spree and were buying up all these agencies.

And Buffett realized that this actually didn't make much sense, and he said, " Instead of buying other agencies, why not buy the best agency, your own?" And he told me: "You should buy back your own shares." I thought it was a bit of a digression, but it was really interesting. Another thing that Claude Hopkins says over and over again : let people try your product, give out samples, do demonstrations, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. I've never thought it was profitable to give out samples to people who didn't ask for them.

We have to generate interest in our product before it becomes valuable to anyone. I think random sample distribution is a really, really bad idea. Products that are given away without asking lose respect. It's different when you force people to make an effort. So , put up an ad, say, "Hey, if you want to learn more about this or want to get a free month or something, I'll send this vacuum cleaner to your house, you can use it for a month or something, and all you have to do is fill out a form." They have to do something first, you see it on the internet, enter your email address or something like that.

But you just shouldn't throw it at them, because it's like, "Hey, I'm going to send out 3 million vacuum cleaners to people." If you want to use the vacuum cleaner example he gives in the book. He's like, " Why the hell did a vacuum cleaner show up at my door ?" So this would be an example of random sample distribution. It's like, "No, just ask them." They have to put in a little effort, but give them a lot in return. It's different when you force people to make an effort.

Well, here we are again. He had already mentioned a dozen variations of the same idea. It's impossible to finish reading the book or even watch this episode and not have this idea etched in your brain. You can't enter a busy market with a simple call to action: " Buy my brand." This is a selfish call. This is disgusting. You need to offer exceptional service to encourage people to switch from their favorite brands to yours. Regular advertisers do not offer such an exceptional service. He talks about how he's just...He's at sea...He's in an industry with second-rate talent.

He says, " If you provide a service where others don't, you can gain a big advantage for yourself." So, again , it's not about you, it's about the service, over and over again . Another thing he talks about — and they give examples, lots of examples in the book — let's say you have Acme Furniture Company or Mrs. B's Furniture Store. If you can give your product and advertising personality, make them personal, you should address them as individuals, and preferably with a real person behind it.

People love people much more than companies. So he created a character for one of his brands . This is a guy named Professor Anderson, and there's a real person behind this, you know? And he says, "I've always done that where possible. Personalities attract, while soulless corporations don't. Make a person famous, and you make their creations famous. We all love to study people and their achievements." And you've seen it repeatedly. My friend Lulu Beserv advises many elite founders in tech, she handles their personal communications. And her manifesto boils down to the need to act directly.

Like , you are you. Very similar to the advice James Dyson's mentor gave him half a century ago. Like, you created a product. You know every little thing, every nuance of your product. You are the guardian of the soul of the company. You are the one who should be doing the sales. You should be the one who explains why people should work for your company, buy your product, or invest in it. Again, people have relationships with people, not companies. One more thing: prevention is not the call that will work.

We should be selling painkillers, not vitamins. He made a ton of money from Pepsodent toothpaste, which I'll talk about in a minute. And so, he talks about it. This section is entirely dedicated to everything he did for Pepsodent. He says, "I decided to advertise this toothpaste as a means of creating beauty." The natural idea for toothpaste at that time was to make it preventive. So, they say, use it now so your teeth don't fall out or decay. He says: “ My experience has taught me that preventive measures are not popular.

People will do anything to cure a problem, but almost nothing to prevent it. Many advertising ideas have failed due to a lack of understanding of this aspect of human nature. Prevention is not very attractive to humanity in general. People want to hear about rewards. People want to know how to become happy, happier, more cheerful, and more beautiful. This is an important point. Every advertising campaign depends on psychology. Success or failure is determined by the right or wrong approach. People hardly think about how to avert trouble.

Their main aspiration is to achieve greater success, happiness, beauty, and joy. I acknowledge this fundamental belief. I never mentioned disasters. I have never depicted those who suffer. Instead, every illustration I used showed attractive people with nice teeth." And he says, “I made a million dollars on Pepsodent. "By the way, it was a crazy amount of money at the time." Simply because I have studied the correct human psychology. " One of my favorite sayings I've come across is that genius has the fewest moving parts." What I like about Claude Hopkins—and this goes for Albert Lasker, because Lasker made more money from advertising than anyone else, as I've said several times—is that he was simple.

It didn't have art departments, it didn't have a huge staff. His concept was : "If I can write the best copy, if I can find the best copywriting that increases sales—that's the only thing my business should do." And so he just hired the best copywriters in the world and let them write the copy that brought in sales, and then they made all the money. He didn't even force them to work in the office. Hopkins often lived in a country house and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which in today's money would be 20-30 million.

This is just a huge amount of money. And he says that all of this was earned at a typewriter , which he worked on himself, without a clerk or secretary. This is incredible. Then he talks about how he learned to do it. How did I manage to achieve so much success in this situation? Simply because I made many small mistakes and learned something from each one. I never made the same mistake twice. Every now and then I would develop some great advertising principle that remained relevant .

This method cost me a huge amount of time, more than other people are willing to spend, much more time and sacrifice than others are willing to make. That is the purpose of this autobiography—to help others start where I left off. This brings us back to one of his maxims: you must completely forget about yourself. I've seen many ads ruined by one unfortunate phrase, usually a selfish one . Phrases like " insist on buying this brand, " "avoid imitations ," "beware of fakes." Such appeals have no positive effect and indicate a motive that buyers cannot sympathize with.

Forget about yourself completely. In every word, strive to enhance a pleasant impression. Only say what you think a good salesperson would say if a potential customer were standing in front of them. Don't brag. He repeats it over and over again . Don't brag. Nothing is more interesting for you than for your buyer. Bragging is repulsive. Another thing that all the great advertisers and copywriters in history repeat: if you have an ad that works, stick with it. Stop changing it. Stop fussing. They say it over and over again .

You see modern people making this mistake over and over again . David Ogilvy summed it up for me in a way I will never forget: You are not advertising to a stationary army, you are advertising to a moving parade. Claude Hopkins says: “ The advertiser clings to the methods he has established. He is afraid of change." He talks about good specialists. In fact, it is rarely wise to change anything. The best way to attract new customers is usually the one that has already attracted millions, but advertising becomes monotonous for people who read every ad.

They always want something new. So, his main point is that you should stick to what works. Don't let your impression overshadow your effectiveness. You read every ad, but your customers don't. You're not advertising for a stationary army, you're advertising for a moving parade. Then he also says that if you stay close to the money and increase sales, you will be very, very rich. But you must capture the value you helped create. So he talks about Pepsodent toothpaste: "Hey, I know my copywriting and advertising will increase your sales, and I'm willing to stand behind my words with my own money." " So he says, 'I bought the stock at the beginning of the project for $13,000, okay?

' "So I, I'm going to invest $13,000. I'm going to buy, buy your stock, right? And my advertising will make it more valuable." That $13,000 for those shares brought him $200,000 in dividends, and many years later he sold those shares for $500,000. This brings us back to the importance of focus, of spending more hours concentrating on one thing. If you have that single-minded focus, as Claude Hopkins said, you will gain insights that are not available to people who haven't put in as much time, effort, and work as you have.

They will never receive the same knowledge. They won't have the same insights. They just won't be as effective as you. I have always been addicted to work. I love work the way other men love play. This is both my profession and my leisure time. As a boy, the need to support myself after school kept me from going to the playgrounds. And as an adult, my desire to learn everything I could about sales skills kept me from wasting time. The only game I ever mastered was business.

For me, he became everything that absorbs attention. And then I remember that Claude writes very simply. He doesn't try to hide his thoughts from you at all. He has a chapter in Scientific Advertising called "Simply the Art of Sales." "And that," he says, "is all that advertising is." Advertising is the art of sales. Its principles are the principles of salesmanship. Therefore, every question about advertising should be answered according to the seller's standards . Advertising is salesmanship multiplied. She can reach thousands, while the salesperson will speak to one.

A mediocre seller can only affect a small portion of your business. Mediocre advertising affects everything. And he continues: “There is one simple and correct way to answer many questions about advertising. Ask yourself: would this help the seller sell the product? Would it help me sell if I met the buyer in person? "Some people tell you to be very concise, they say people will read, but they will read very little." Would you say that to a salesperson? Would you limit him to a certain number of words when he is in front of potential clients?

That would be an unthinkable obstacle. Consider them as potential customers standing in front of you . “So this brings us back to the idea of treating advertising as a sales skill. All of your ads should be directed at one person, as if they were standing right in front of you. They 've already shown interest, have n't they? This is where your headline grabbed them, or the image you used caught their attention. Now that you have their attention, how would you talk to them if it was just one person?

Do not address them as a mass or consider them a mass. I like this idea. Consider them as potential customers standing in front of you in search of information. Give them enough to motivate them to take action. So, this idea of, "Hey , everyone says they're not going to read, or listen, or watch ads, or whatever." It's like, " People will spend time on what interests them if you make it interesting." And the thesis used by Claude Hopkins and repeated by David Ogilvy is that the more you tell, the more you sell.

In fact, in some cases, their most successful ads are about 15,000 words long, but it's an interesting story, interesting information about a product that the person is already interested in because they read the headline and decided to read the body copy. Don't think of people as a mass. So it's like repeating the same thing over and over again . Think about a typical person who probably wants what you are selling. Spending money is a serious matter. Don't brag. He's said it before. Don't try to show off.

Do what you think a good salesperson should do with someone who is already half- convinced. The advertiser studies the consumer. He tries to put himself in the buyer's shoes. Its success depends largely on doing this to the exclusion of everything else. Here's another chapter in " Science Advertising," and if you buy his audiobook, he adds "Science Advertising" at the end of that book. And he has a chapter, again, the chapters are very simple, and I think they really illustrate the principles that he thinks are very important, the ones that he has learned over decades of experience.

Offer a service . Service, service, service. Remember that the people you are addressing are selfish. We are all like that . They don't care about your interests or your profits. They seek benefits for themselves; Ignoring this fact is a common mistake, and it is very costly in advertising. The ads essentially say, "Buy my brand." "Give me the orders you give to others." "Give me this money." This is not a popular call. The best advertising doesn't ask anyone to buy. These ads are entirely based on benefit.

They offer the necessary information. They provide benefits for users. Some of these ads may seem altruistic, but they are based on knowledge of human nature. The authors of these ads know how to encourage people to buy. A good salesperson doesn't say, " Buy my product." He paints in the customer's imagination the benefits of the service until a purchase becomes the natural result. And so he gives an example of how this guy made hairbrushes, right? His sales strategy was that he hired 2,000 sales representatives. But they didn't knock on the door and say, " Hey, look, I have a brush." Do you want to, you know, try combing your hair?

She combs her hair better. She does this and that." "This is very exciting." So, he says he has achieved tremendous success in an industry that seemed very difficult. And that's how it would be if his people asked housewives to buy the product. Remember, he said that the best advertising doesn't ask anyone to buy. But they don't do that. They go door to door and say, “I was sent here to give you a brush. I have samples, and I want you to choose the one you like." While choosing one brush, she sees several others that she also wants.

She also wants to thank him for the gift. So, the seller receives the order. And this is his summary for the chapter. People can be persuaded, but not forced. Everything they do, they do to please themselves. There would be far fewer mistakes made in advertising if these facts were not forgotten. You know, it's funny how he says, "Hey, don't change your advertising. Just repeat it over and over again . The best way to attract new customers is the same way you acquired your previous ones. The fact that he just repeats these ideas...He used the same idea because he just repeats these same thoughts over and over throughout the book.

And now, a few pages later, he says: "The motto is: the more you tell, the more you sell." It has never failed in any test we know of. It seems like he's checking to see if you're paying attention because he keeps repeating the same thought. Sometimes he uses different words, but he illustrates the same concept over and over again. And then he moves on to the headlines, and that's what piqued my initial interest. I'm , you know, obsessed with finding the best and most memorable way to get the main idea across, which I think you and I do a lot on this podcast.

One of the things I came across when I was reading the autobiography Four Seasons . Four Seasons founder Isadore Sharp. And he described, you know, he's just talking about the process of creating one of the most valuable and historic brands of all time, companies of all time. And he seems to sum it up for us in one word. He says: " Perfection is the ability to endure pain." And if you read this book, it's really just about all the pain he had to endure to get to the finale.

You know, he started wanting to build, he had this ridiculous idea at the time that others thought was, "I'm going to build the most prestigious luxury hotel brand in the world, even though I've never built hotels before." So, it is obvious that there must have been a lot of pain between this thought and the realization of the dream , and many people, of course, run away from this pain and cannot bear it. So, perfection is the ability to endure pain. And what led me to this idea that I've been thinking about this week— why I wanted to read "Science Advertising"—was Claude Hopkins' ideas about headlines.

And this is just the section about headlines. The purpose of the headline is to highlight people who might be interested. You want to talk to someone in the crowd. So the first thing you say is, "Hey, Bill Jones." to attract the attention of the right person. Headlines in advertising are like headlines in the news. Nobody reads the newspaper in its entirety. We choose what we want to read based on headlines, and we don't want those headlines to be misleading. Writing headlines is one of the highest journalistic arts.

They either hide or show interest. Always remember these facts. People are in a hurry. They want to have fun or benefit. There may be products that interest them more than anything else, but they will never know about it unless the headline tells them. The author of this section, that is, himself, spends much more time on headings than on writing the text. Ogilvy said the same thing. He said something like: 80 or 90% of people will read the headline , not the main text. So it follows that you should spend most of your time writing the headline, right?

So, he says, "I spend more time on headlines than I do writing copy." I often spend hours on one headline. Often dozens of titles are discarded before choosing the right one. After all, the entire return on advertising depends on attracting the right readers. The best sales skills don't stand a chance if we're not heard. So his point is , what's the point of explaining your product or describing the benefits, right? The headline makes them interested. It's like a door that opens for them to come in and actually read, or in this case, listen to, watch, or whatever about your product, right?

The way I think about it and why it should be interesting, not misleading...O'Dea, I agree, has another great maxim. He says, "We cannot save souls in an empty church." Truth? That's what pisses me off about some other business podcasts, for example. I find entrepreneurship to be the most exciting topic in the world. I believe that founders , people who create something that didn't exist before, are the most important people in the world. This...There are so many crazy characters, stories, exciting ideas and ways of living. This is just madness.

I'm still... this podcast started next month. So, in September 2016, I started Founders. So, the month after next will be 10 years. I'm still...I'm more interested in entrepreneurship today than when I started. I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. How the hell can you make this topic boring? To me, this is madness. Therefore, souls cannot be saved in an empty church. We can teach and inspire, right? But the first thing you must do is entertain before you can educate or inspire. So, I think that's what they're hinting at here.

You have to understand what the headline is. What "hook" will get people interested in what you want to tell them about? And in his case, he writes for products. Any product is an idea that makes someone's life better. So spend a lot of time figuring out what the main attraction is for your potential client. The very customer who you want will actually buy the product. You do this, of course, through a large amount of research . He talks about it a lot too . But the reason why it's so important, and I think this is one of the best examples, is he just said, " Hey, you know, spend so much time on one headline, the entire success can just depend on getting the right person involved, and you do that through the headline." I don't know why, but when I read this, I remember what Steve Jobs did with the iPod.

He seemed to have explained the entire value of the proposal in a few words. A thousand songs in your pocket. This affects you. This interests me. What? I want a thousand songs in my pocket. How is this even possible? What did you create? Then I'll listen to your entire presentation, watch a product demo, read the commercial, or whatever . I think it's very, very exciting. So, again, salesmanship has no chance if we don't get to that point, and you can't save a soul in an empty church .

The same ad with different headlines produces radically different results. Often, changing the headline increases profits five to ten times. So, Claude Hopkins says, "A headline change can increase profits five to tenfold." In Ogilvy's books, written probably two or three decades after this one , he says he saw a difference of nineteen to one. This is madness. The results vary greatly depending on the headlines. Reach out to those you are looking for, and only them. He would return to this idea later. Then he talks about psychology, which again he writes entire chapters about.

This is very, very important. A competent advertiser must understand psychology. Human nature is unchanging. It is the same today as it was in Caesar's time. So the principles of psychology are stable and unchanging. You will never have to forget what you learned about them. We learn, for example, that curiosity is one of the most powerful human drives. We use it whenever we can. He then gives examples of these psychological characteristics that will always be relevant, and you will see it again and again. People judge things mostly by price.

He gives the example of a painting that was advertised as being worth $750,000. Before you tell people that a painting costs $750,000, which at the time would be , say, $ 100 million today. I'm just making up a number, but a big number, right? He says most people walk past her without even giving her a second look. Then you tell them, "Hey, this painting is worth 750 grand." And they find out how much the painting is worth, turn around and surround it. It really creates a crowd because it's so expensive.

Another thing he discovered is that we are naturally tribal creatures and like to belong to groups. So he says, "It's been found that if an offer is limited to a certain group of people, it's much more effective than a general offer." For example, an offer limited to war veterans, lodge members, or leaders. Those who are entitled to any perceived advantage will do their utmost to not lose it. “Another one,” an identical proposition, —and here he emphasizes this again . About why even a slight change in the positioning of the same ad is so important, because these things matter a lot.

An identical offer presented differently can bring significantly greater profits. This could be a change in title, a change in presentation, a change in membership requirements, or even a higher price. Another way to increase and multiply the return on your advertising is to be specific. Use real numbers. And he gives great examples here. You'll see it like, "Hey, you need to come to town and say, ' We have the best cheesecake in the world,'" or something like that. It says: " Blanches and general phrases make no impression on people , like water dripping from a duck." They don't make any impression at all.

The words “best in the world,” “lowest prices,” etc. are, at best, just expected statements. However, clear, specific statements are usually taken for granted. Real numbers are usually beyond doubt. Specific facts have full weight and force. The weight of an argument can often be increased by making it specific. He gives the example of many people who sell, for example, clothes. And they say, " Hey, we have the lowest prices in America." This is not a very effective call. One man who sold a lot of clothes said, "My net profit is 3%." It was a specific statement , and it made a big impression.

So , again, essentially illustrating the same idea: for example, we have very low prices. We say: "the lowest price in America." Okay, my profit is only 3%. If you're a buyer, you're thinking, "Okay, that's pretty weird." This means they are barely making ends meet . I probably won't be able to buy these clothes cheaper than from someone who is selling them for next to no profit. He gives another example: many people sell razors for shaving their faces. Many razor manufacturers have long advertised a fast shave.

One manufacturer advertised a 78-second shave. That was a specific statement. It indicated the real test results. This man achieved simply sensational growth in his sales. And then he comes back to the importance of headlines, and that's a great way to summarize his main point. Your main call to action should be in the headline. Whatever your promise, the best promise you have—the real benefit the customer gets from using your product— make sure it's in the headline. Let 's go back to Steve Jobs. 1000 songs in your pocket.

His main appeal was in the headline. And then he concludes by talking about effort. An advertising copywriter , in order to have a chance of success, must obtain complete information about his subject. A diligent advertiser will often spend weeks studying an emerging problem. He may find only a few useful facts in many volumes, but one fact may be the key to his success. To advertise toothpaste, this author also read many volumes of scientific materials, dry as dust, but in the middle of one volume he found an idea that helped the manufacturer of this toothpaste earn millions.

Genius is the art of making an effort. This is too good not to say again . Genius is the art of making an effort. An advertiser who regrets working at night will never achieve significant success. Let me interrupt this with a moment where he says, "Hey, I've been reading volume after volume of these scientific papers. They're dry as dust. It's boring. But I just found one sentence, one idea, that became the foundation, the cornerstone of this advertising campaign that made my client millions." Ogilvy said the same thing happened to him .

He read hundreds of pages, if I remember correctly, about his client Rolls-Royce. And he said it was in some little-known engineering document. It was n't even intended for advertising purposes. It wasn't even intended for the eyes of outsiders. And he found a line that became the basis of one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time. And it goes like this: "At 60 miles per hour, the loudest sound in this new Rolls-Royce is the electric clock ." Genius is the art of making an effort.

An advertiser who regrets working at night will never achieve significant success. An advertising campaign is usually preceded by a very large amount of data. Uninformed people would be amazed to learn how much work goes into just one advertisement. Weeks of work . Advertising seems so simple, and it has to be simple to be catchy. But behind that advertising may lie piles of data, volumes of information, and months of research. This is not a field for the lazy. And I'll stop there. I highly recommend reading both his autobiography, "My Life in Advertising," and his book on advertising called " Scientific Advertising." That's 430 books read already , 1,000 left, and we'll hear from you again soon .

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