‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees.’

Respondents do not always tell the truth to interviewers. I used to start my questionnaires by asking, ‘Which would you rather hear on the radio tonight – Jack Benny or a Shakespeare play?’ If the respondent said Shakespeare, I knew he was a liar and broke off the interview.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Professor William K. Hall reported on a study of eight industries, from steel to beer. The most successful companies were those that best differentiated their product or service.

In 1919 Rubicam moved to N.W. Ayer, then the largest agency in the country. There he wrote campaigns which have been included in every anthology of great advertisements, including ‘The Instrument of the Immortals’ for Steinway and ‘The Priceless Ingredient’ for Squibb.

Amour propre

I am convinced that if all advertisers were to follow the example of their direct response brethren, they would get more sales per dollar. Every copywriter should start his career by spending two years in direct response.

Research can measure the wear-out of your advertising. For five years, the theme of Shell’s commercials was mileage, and tracking studies recorded increasingly favorable attitudes to the product. When attitudes finally stopped improving, the advertising was changed from demonstrations of mileage to consumer testimonials, and the upward trend was

Body copy is seldom read by more than 10 per cent of the readers of a publication. But that 10 per cent consists of prospects – people interested enough in what you are selling to take the trouble to read about it. What you say to them determines the success of your advertisement.

My own definition is ‘what the product does, and who it is for.’