My Life in Advertising

Masters of Marketing Secrets: A Copywriter's Journey to Success

This book is not written as a personal history, but as a business story. I have tried to avoid trivialities and 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.

My only claim for credit 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. Naturally I learned more from experience than those who had a lesser chance. Now I want that experience, so far as possible, to help others avoid the same difficult climb.

Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I have tried to do.

I set down these findings solely for the purpose of aiding others to start far up the heights I scaled. Then, with the efforts I here describe, I hope you can now attain some peaks in advertising beyond any of us to date.

- Claude C. Hopkins

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Claude C. Hopkins (1866–1932) was one of the great advertising pioneers. He believed advertising existed only to sell something and should be measured and justified by the results it produced.

To track the results of his advertising, he used key coded coupons and then tested headlines, offers and propositions against one another. He used the analysis of these measurements to continually improve his ad results, driving responses and the cost effectiveness of his clients' advertising spend.

His classic book, "Scientific Advertising," was published in 1923, following his retirement from Lord & Thomas, where he finished his career as president and chairman.

This book was followed, in 1927, by his autobiographical work "My Life in Advertising." (from Wikipedia)