The Hopkins Approach to Advertising

By Mark Tungate
Author of Adland

Claude Hopkins overtly stated that the purpose of advertising was to sell. He spent his entire career honing techniques that would serve this end. He believed in research, both before and after the event, and insisted that advertising was worthless unless it could demonstrate a tangible effect on sales.

Claude was born in Detroit in 1866 and at age 18 he got a job at Bissell, the mechanical carpet sweeper manufacturer.

Initially employed as a bookkeeper, Hopkins took it upon himself to rewrite the company’s brochure, which he felt showed limited knowledge of the product. The original brochure was written be the copywriting pioneer John E. Powers, but Hopkins was not daunted by Powers’ reputation. "He knew nothing about carpet sweepers. He had given no study to our trade situation. He knew nothing of our problems. He never gave one moment to studying a woman’s possible wish for a carpet sweeper." Hopkins considered that only with a thorough understanding of the product, its benefits and its potential customers could a copywriter pen a convincing ad.

The success of Hopkins’ early promotional efforts for Bissell led him to the Chicago offices of Swift & Company, a marketer of meat products and derivatives. Hopkins applied for the job of advertising manager, only to be told during an interview that he was 106^th on a list of 106 applicants. Undaunted he asked all the advertising agencies that had approached him with job offers to send references to Swift confirming his talents as a copywriter. Next he convinced his local newspaper to let him write a column about advertising, free of charge, in return for a byline with his photograph above it. Each time the article appeared he clipped it out and sent it to Swift. Finally the man who had interviewed him, Mr. I. H. Rich, called him back and offered him the job.

It was while he was freelancing in Chicago that Hopkins honed another of the techniques that was to leave its mark on advertising history. Hired to promote beer brand Schlitz, he discovered that its bottles were steam cleaned – just as they were in every other brewery. But no other brewery had thought of including this nugget of information in its advertising. When an ad penned by Hopkins pointed out that Schlitz bottles were "washed with live steam", it gave the impression that the brand cared more about purity and hygiene than any of its competitors.

This was the essence of the Hopkins approach. For each product, he would find the unique factor that set it apart from its rivals. "You cannot go into a well occupied field with the simple appeal ‘buy my brand’, he wrote. "That is repugnant to all. One must offer exceptional service to induce people to change from favorite brands to yours." Hopkins called this the "pre-emptive claim". Later, in the hands of Rosser Reeves, who worked for Ted Bates & Co in the 1950s, it became the Unique Selling Proposition. Reeves pushed the idea to an extreme, turning each USP into a simple slogan that he punched home with repetitive ads.

Mark Tungate 2007;Adapted from ADLAND a global history of advertising by Mark Tungate, published by Kogan Page. www.koganpage.com

Mark Tungate is a British journalist based in Paris, specializing in media, marketing and communication. He is the author of the best-selling Fashion Brands (also published by Kogan Page). He is a regular correspondent for the advertising industry journal Campaign and writes a weekly column for the French marketing magazine Stratégies. Mark writes regularly about advertising, style and culture, and his work has appeared in The Times and Daily Telegraph newspapers. He also contributes to the trend forecasting service Worth Global Style Network (WGSN.com). He writes the text for The Epica Book, an annual review of the best European advertising, and is the co-presenter of a weekly French TV show about advertising creativity. www.tungateinparis.com