Scientific Advertising

Claude Hopkins wrote Scientific Advertising to argue that advertising can be practised as a measured discipline rather than a matter of flair. His approach rests on testing and then counting the results, so that losses from unsuccessful advertisements are held to a level the advertiser can bear while the gains from profitable ones are multiplied. As Hopkins put it, the advertiser who works this way is playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot. The book is cited as the original description of split testing, and of tracking customers and rewarding their loyalty through coupons, which is why it is widely treated as a foundation of direct marketing. Its reputation has been carried largely by practitioners. Advertising and marketing figures including David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham have called it essential reading, and Ogilvy wrote that nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read it seven times, adding that it changed the course of his life. According to Paul Feldwick it has sold more than eight million copies.

Written from the encyclopaedia article on Scientific Advertising at Wikipedia.

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