BOOK REVIEW - Scientific Advertising

Scientific Advertising, Claude C Hopkins, Alastair Campbell

By Claude C Hopkins and Alistair Campbell

The legendary Claude C Hopkins wrote ‘Scientific Advertising', his classic on the art of advertising, nearly 100 years ago. It is a tribute to the vision of this pioneer of modern advertising that the insights contained in this slim volume remain, for the most part, relevant today. Digital channels may have superseded the print media that dominated in his day, but the principles of how to create a compelling message that sells to potential customers are as true now as they were when Hopkins was formulating them.

Our Review

Today’s book review is Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, and I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Claude Hopkins before, but basically Claude Hopkins was one of the grandfathers of direct marketing.

This book is nearly 100 years old. It was first written in 1923. Basically, he was the chairman of one of the most successful advertising agencies, and when he retired he decided to put his life’s work into this book. Some of the elements you can take away are how advertising laws are established, what makes headlines effective, how to use samples, the best ways to test campaigns, the impact of negative advertising. And it is a fantastic book.

Actually Claude Hopkins died in 1932, and it’s probably renowned as one of the best marketing books you could get. It’s not a big book. Probably, I don’t know, 100 pages, something like that. But it is certainly in my top three advertising/marketing books I would recommend reading. The stuff in here is timeless. It’s, as I say, nearly 100 years old, the content in here, but the stuff works as good as it did 100 years ago today, nearly 100 years later.

So this is definitely one you want to read. Put it in your priority reading list, to get a copy of this and read it for yourself.