The difference between advertising and personal
salesmanship lies largely in personal contact. The salesman is there to demand
attention. He cannot be ignored. The advertisement can be ignored.
But the salesman wastes much of his time on prospects whom he can never hope
to interest. He cannot pick them out. The advertisement is read only by
interested people who, by their own volition, study what we have to say.
The purpose of a headline is to pick out people you can interest. You wish to
talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, "Hey there, Bill
Jones" to get the right persons attention.
So it is in an advertisement. What you have will interest
certain people only, and for certain reasons. You care only for those people.
Then create a headline which will hail those people only.
Perhaps a blind headline or some clever conceit will attract many times as
many. But they may consist of mostly impossible subjects for what you have to
offer. And the people you are after may never realize that the ad refers to
something they may want.
Headlines on ads are like headlines on news items. Nobody reads a whole
newspaper. One is interested in financial news, one in political, one in
society, one in cookery, one in sports, etc. There are whole pages in any
newspaper which we may never scan at all. Yet other people might turn directly
to those pages.
We pick out what we wish to read by headlines, and we don't want those
headlines misleading. The writing of headlines is one of the greatest
journalistic arts. They either conceal or reveal an interest.
Suppose a newspaper article stated that a certain woman was the most
beautiful in the city. That article would be of intense interest to that woman
and her friends. But neither she nor her friends would ever read it if the
headline was "Egyptian Psychology."
So in advertising. It is commonly said that people do not read
advertisements. That is silly, of course. We who spend millions in advertising
and watch the returns marvel at the readers we get. Again and again we see 20
percent of all the readers of a newspaper cut out a certain coupon.
But people do not read ads for amusement. They don't read ads which, at a
glance, seem to offer nothing interesting. A double-page ad on women's dresses
will not gain a glance from a man. Nor will a shaving cream ad from a woman.
Always bear these facts in mind. People are hurried. The average person worth
cultivating has too much to read. They skip three-fourths of the reading matter
which they pay to get. They are not going to read your business talk unless you
make it worth their while and let the headline show it.
People will not be bored in print. They may listen politely at a dinner table
to boasts and personalities, life history, etc. But in print they choose their
own companions, their own subjects. They want to be amused or benefited. They
want economy, beauty, labor savings, good things to eat and wear. There may be
products which interest them more than anything else in the magazine. But they
will never know it unless the headline or picture tells them.
The writer of this chapter spends far more time on headlines than on writing.
He often spends hours on a single headline. Often scores of headlines are
discarded before the right one is selected. For the entire return from an ad
depends on attracting the right sort of readers. The best of salesmanship has no
chance whatever unless we get a hearing.
The vast difference in headlines is shown by keyed returns which this book
advocates. The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in
its returns. It is not uncommon for a change in
headlines to multiply returns from five or ten times over.
So we compare headlines until we know what sort of appeal pays best. That
differs in every line, of course.
The writer has before him keyed returns on nearly two thousand headlines used
on a single product. The story in these ads are nearly identical. But the
returns vary enormously, due to the headlines. So with every keyed return in our
record appears the headlines that we used. Thus we learn what type of headline
has the most widespread appeal. The product has many uses. It fosters beauty. It
prevents disease. It aides daintiness and cleanliness. We learn to exactness
which quality most of our readers seek.
This does not mean we neglect the others. One sort of
appeal may bring half the returns of another, yet be important enough to be
profitable. We overlook no field that pays. But we know what proportion of
our ads should, in the headline, attract any certain class.
For this same reason we employ a vast variety of ads. If we are using twenty
magazines we may use twenty separate ads. This because circulation's overlap,
and because a considerable percentage of people are attracted by each of several
forms of approach. We wish to reach them all.
On a soap, for instance, the headline "Keep Clean" might attract a very small
percentage. It is to commonplace. So might the headline, "No animal fat." People
may not care much about that. The headline, "It floats" might prove interesting.
But a headline referring to beauty or complexion might attract many times as
many.
An automobile ad might refer in the headline to a good universal joint. It
might fall flat, because so few buyers think of universal joints. The same ad
with a headline, "The Sportiest of Sport Bodies," might out pull the other fifty
to one.
This is enough to suggest the importance of headlines. Anyone who keys ads
will be amazed at the difference. The appeals we like
best will rarely prove best, because we do not know enough people to average up
their desires. So we learn on each line by experiment.
But back of all lie fixed principles. You are presenting an ad to millions.
Among them is a percentage, small or large, whom you hope to interest. Go after
that percentage and try to strike the chord that responds. If you are
advertising corsets, men and children don't interest you. If you are advertising
cigars, you have no use for non-smokers. Razors won't attract women, rouge will
not interest men.
Don't think that those millions will read your ads to find out if your
product interests. They will decide at a glance - by your headline or your
pictures. Address the people you seek, and them only.
Table of Contents
Chapter Six