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David Ogilvy: "I am a lousy copywriter" (1955)
- yarone 15y agoReminiscent of the fun / creativity / agony of product design work (including the "work from home" and "growl" at wife bits).
- badclient 15y agoIn some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines. Split testing headlines in the 1950s? I wonder how many others were doing this in that era.
- klbarry 15y agoLester Wunderman, the father of direct marketing, spoke about split testing existing in the 1930s and earlier in his autobiography "Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay". I cannot recommend this book enough for anyone interesting in mass persuasion.
- gruseom 15y agoClaude Hopkins was doing A/B testing as early as 1910. He had people send out different versions of direct-mail ads, which they would correlate with sales. http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific-Classics-Library/dp/0844231010 http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific-Classics-L... I recommend this book. Apart from this and other techniques that he pioneered astonishingly early (we know that's true because the book came out in 1923), it's striking how many brands Hopkins created that are still household words today (Goodyear, Palmolive, Quaker). The book is also a plain good read.
- pospischil 15y agoFor those who prefer electronic versions, My Life in Advertising is available on Google Books for free: http://books.google.com/books/about/My_life_in_advertising.html?id=jvhCAAAAIAAJ http://books.google.com/books/about/My_life_in_advertising.h... Scientific Advertising is also available for free (as a pdf): http://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.pdf http://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.p...
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoI'm saddened that this is one of the last things to enter the public domain in the US.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- VMG 15y agoonly in the US it seems (says "no ebook available" in germany)
- mattm 15y agoRead the book "Why We Buy." This guy has built his career on doing A/B testing in actual department stores.
- GigabyteCoin 15y agoComparing results and running with what works best? (aka split testing) I don't think that alone is a novel idea in the slightest. Every human does it at one time or another. Be it choosing their favorite toothpaste or selecting the advertising slogan that will win you the honor of being called "The Father of Advertising".
- 6ren 15y agofunfact: David Ogilvy had below average IQ (96) http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vrDEWAcDGbkC&lpg=PA157&ots=UX3Og5sz38&dq=david%20ogilvy%20intelligent%20IQ&pg=PA157#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vrDEWAcDGbkC&lpg=PA1...
- richardburton 15y agoThis quote is fantastic: I have never written an advertisement in the office.
- richardburton 15y agoThis is hilarious: If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.
- richardburton 15y agoThis is important context that should have been added to the quote: I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft.
- nandemo 15y agoExactly. It really means that he's a great copywriter who rarely gets it right in the first try. Which describes a lot of great fiction writers and programmers too.
- mathattack 15y agoBeing a good editor rather than writer applies to design and coding too. Of course this is probably why the article is in HN.