A Belated Happy Hopkins Day!

I'm sharing this post from Kimmel's Corner, Larry's Kimmel's blog.  Like Larry, I've heard about Claude Hopkins since my direct marketing career started as a catalog writer.  With thanks to Larry for sharing and a Belated Happy Hopkins Day to all!

17 Killer Quotes for “Happy Hopkins Day”

He was a legend.  He redefined an industry.  He turned an art form into a scientific endeavor.  He is the godfather of the scientific marketing method.  90 years ago, he wrote Scientific Advertising.

His name was Claude C. Hopkins.  Today would have been his 147th birthday. (He liked exact numbers.)  To those who have dedicated their careers to “data-driven marketing”, “direct marketing”, “accountable marketing” or “scientific marketing”, a debt of gratitude is owed to Claude Hopkins.  I thereby declare today, April 24^th, “Happy Hopkins Day.”

Today, just like our godfather did, let’s share what we’ve learned from him or from other legends: John Caples, David Ogilvy, Lester Wunderman, Bob Stone, et cetera.  Or, please share learning from your scientific marketing endeavors.

I’ll start the Happy Hopkins Day festivities.  Here are 17 of Claude Hopkins’ ideas/quotes that live on:

• “The time has come when advertising has in some hands reached the status of a science.”
• “Advertising, once a gamble, has become, under able direction, one of the safest of business ventures.”
• “The compass of accurate knowledge directs the shortest safest, cheapest course to any destination.”
• “The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.”
• “Treat it (advertising) as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesman. Figure cost and result. Accept no excuses.”
• “I never ask people to buy. The ads all offer service, perhaps a free sample. They sound altruistic. But they get a reading and action. No selfish appeal can do that.”
• “My words will be simple, my sentences short.”
• “We must get down to individuals. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person.”
• “Until one feels sure that the advantages are strongly on his side, it is folly to risk a battle.”
• “The lack of fundamentals has been the main trouble with advertising in the past. Each worker was a law to himself.”
• “I set down these findings solely for the purpose of aiding others to start far up the heights I scaled.”
• “My only claim is that I probably worked twice as long as anybody else.”
• “The man who does two or three times the work of another learns two or three times as much.”
• “If a thing is useful they call it work, if useless they call it play … all the difference I see lies in attitude of mind.”
• “I came to love work as other men love golf.”
• “What others call work I call play, and vice versa.”
• “I consider business as a game and I play it as a game. That’s why I have been, and still am, so devoted to it.

Now, it’s your turn.  What marketing insights to you want to share?  Let’s learn a lot today and make it a very Happy Hopkins Day!