My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Author:Claude Hopkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 1966-03-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Pepsodent

The greatest success of my career so far has been made on Pepsodent Tooth Paste. Its promoter has been associated with me for twenty-two years. We have made millions together in advertising enterprises. When I went with Lord & Thomas he was quite despondent. He offered me a large salary to idle and wait for him to find some mutual opportunity.

He became involved in irrigation projects in Tucson, Arizona. There the nights are long and lonesomeness omnipotent. So he courted the acquaintance of the health-seekers there, and one of them had evolved this tooth paste.

When he brought it to me I tried to discourage him. It was a technical proposition. I did not see a way to educate the laity in technical tooth-paste theories. He insisted on a fifty-cent price, when twenty-five cents had been the usual price for a tooth paste.

But he was persistent. So I finally agreed to undertake the campaign if he gave me a six months’ option on a block of stock, which he did.

I read book after book by dental authorities on the theory on which Pepsodent was based. It was dry reading. But in the middle of one book I found a reference to the mucin plaques on teeth, which I afterward called the film. That gave me an appealing idea.

I resolved to advertise this tooth paste as a creator of beauty. To deal with that cloudy film.

The natural idea in respect to a tooth paste is to make it a preventive. But my long experience had taught me that preventive 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.

Then I was urged to present the results of neglect, the negative side of the subject. But I had learned that repulsive ideas seldom won readers or converts. People do not want to read of the penalties. They want to be told of rewards. “Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.” People want to be told the ways to happiness and cheer.

This point is important. Every advertising campaign depends on its psychology. Success or failure is determined by the right or wrong appeal. Scores have tried to scare people into using a certain tooth paste. Not one has succeeded, so far as I know, save where they appealed to troubles already created. Folks give little thought to warding off disasters. Their main ambition is to attain more success, more happiness, more beauty, more cheer.

I recognized that fundamental. I never referred to disasters. I never pictured the afflicted. Every illustration I ever used showed attractive people and beautiful teeth.

But there were many more things to consider. Some I had learned by previous experience, some I had to learn in this line. We keyed every ad. by the coupon. We tried out hundreds of ads. Week by week the results were reported to me, and with each report came the headline we employed.

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