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5. The Lonely Advocate of Response Testing
What if you are selling a product whose sales are not recordable
by scanner? Then it's time to take a new look at one of the oldest yet
most frequently overlooked research methods, the direct-response split
run.
More than half a century ago, an advertising pioneer named
John Caples showed how the question of effective advertising can be removed
from the realm of opinion and decided by the ACTUAL RESPONSE response
of the public.
But the system Caples pioneered - gradually fell into disuse.
David Ogilvy, one of the great theorists of advertising,
deserves our thanks for rekindling interest in what Caples advocated.
In the foreword to the fourth edition of Caples's book, Ogilvy pays generous
tribute to its value:
John Caples writes, "I have seen one advertisement
sell 19 times as much goods as another." This statement dramatizes the
gigantic difference between good advertisements and bad ones...
An earlier edition taught me most of what I know about
writing advertisements. These discoveries . . . have been made by John
Caples in the course of his long and distinguished career. He has been
able to measure the results of every advertisement he has ever written.
The average manufacturer, who sells through a complex
system of distribution, is unable to do this. He cannot isolate the
results of individual advertisements from the other factors in his marketing
mix. He is forced to fly blind....
The vast majority of people who work in ad agencies,
and almost all their clients, skid helplessly about on the greasy surface
of irrelevant brilliance. They waste millions on bad advertising, when
good advertising could be selling 19 times as much.
There are two main aspects to Caple's process: (1) the
testing method and (2) the principles of effective advertising he had
derived as a result of many tests.
These practical principles of effective mail-order and direct-response
advertising offer a timeless but sorely neglected approach to the improvement
of all advertising. This approach involves applying the testing techniques
of mail-order advertising to products not sold by mail at all but rather
at retail or by a salesperson.
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