My next lesson in advertising was learned at the age of twenty.

I was writing ads for numerous retail dealers. Aluminum ware was just coming into vogue. I specialized on it because I felt that every home should have it, and few homes were supplied.

I found that ads inviting women to an aluminum display brought few responses and the cost was high.

But when I offered a souvenir on a certain day I got quick action, and the saving in cost per visitor paid for the souvenir some twenty times over.

I supplied that plan to aluminum dealers everywhere and thus made my first success in advertising. Then I applied it to other lines, and developed in that way a large retail clientele.

I have used that idea in countless lines since then.

Instead of saying to women “Come any time,” I set a certain hour or day or week.

I print in the ad a reminder for the woman to cut out. That is so she won’t forget. To insure inspection of my product I offer some gift or inducement. That reduces my cost per visitor.

Thus I get prompt action and decision at minimum expense.

Later I found that I could quadruple results by not telling what the souvenir was.

Curiosity is a greater pulling factor than a gift.

About the same time I learned another great lesson. That is, not to talk mechanics to a woman.

I was selling carpet sweepers, but not selling very many. Under pressure from the management I was talking broom action, cyco bearings, patent dumping devices, etc.

Then I went out on the road with a sample sweeper and a bag of bran. I went into stores and showed women customers how the sweeper swept up bran. I taught dealers and their clerks to make like demonstrations, then went back to my office and taught them by mail.

Then carpet sweepers began to sell.

I enlarged on the plan by offering special exhibits. I had the sweepers built in peculiar or rare woods. Or I had them built twelve woods to the dozen to make a forestry exhibit. I furnished circulars for dealers to put in their packages, inviting women to see an exhibit which would never appear again. Sales multiplied over and over.

My methods brought me reputation, and I received numerous offers to enter wider fields.

Since then I have never discussed mechanics with women. I have used very little logic. I have brought them to see what my product would do in some interesting manner.

My next lesson was learned in the advertising of a vegetable shortening.

I made very slow progress in merely talking that shortening against lard. I saw in a few weeks that I would lose my job before I won a profit.

So I built in a department store in Chicago the largest cake in the world.

It was made with this shortening. I advertised it like a circus and brought one hundred thousand women in one week to see it. I served them samples. Then I offered premiums to those who would buy that day.

The plan was a tremendous success.

The shortening was placed on a profit-paying basis in one week. Then I built a like cake in the leading stores of a hundred cities and made the product a nation-wide success.

That saved my job, gave me added reputation, and taught me to dramatize my subjects when I could.

My text lessons were learned in mail-order advertising. I did this on numerous lines at night.

There I looked cost and result in the face, as all mail-order advertisers do. I found that any wasted space increased my cost. ‘When I used a useless picture to attract attention, and that picture occupied one-third my space, it increased my cost fifty per cent.

When I used a type twice larger than necessary it doubled my cost per reply.

That taught me economy of space. I found that people would read ads set in small type just as readily as in large type. They read about everything they care to read in 8-point type or smaller.

Larger type brought no additional readers.

Nor did any meaningless picture or display.

People read ads, like everything else, because the subject is interesting to them. They judge by the headline, on news items or on ads. I have saved advertisers millions of dollars through that well-proved principle of economizing space.

Mail-order advertising also taught me that headlines differ immensely in their pulling power.

A certain ad with one headline will pull ten times better than the same ad with another headline. That taught me to learn in every line what appeals pay best. It taught me to key all advertising, to compare one ad with another, just as mail-order advertisers do. And never to use an ad in wide circulation until I have tried it out.

In the twenty-five years since then I have put thousands of ads to the test.

I found on one line that a certain appeal cost $14.20 per reply. Another appeal on that same line cost 42 cents per reply. One ad on one line cost me $17 to get a coupon for a sample. Another ad on that same line, telling almost an identical story, cost 35 cents per reply.

In almost every line I have found certain lines of approach which would have made profit impossible. And those were often the ads which everybody favored.

There lies the main reason for the success I have gained.

I have never spent much money on a gamble or a guess.

I have compared dozens of ads, sometimes hundreds of ads, before going into large circulation. The best-paying ads were selected. Then I constantly tested other ads in a small way to find something better still. On one line I tried out 56 series of ads, and after five years I found a way to bring results at one-fourth the cost of the best way I had found before.

I am convinced that nobody, save by some rare accident, can do effective advertising without those comparisons, based on known returns. Certainly others must make the same mistakes that I made.

They must get the wrong viewpoints about as often as I did. Decades ago I would have wrecked myself and wrecked my clients had I not known my results.

My next lesson was learned in starting numerous products. I was gaining reputation. Countless people came to me with what they considered good advertising projects.

I made several great mistakes by relying on my judgment and on theirs.

The products were not as salable as we thought.

So I decided to attempt nothing until I had tested the project in a limited way.

I set the limit on a test campaign at $5,000, but most such campaigns cost less. Thus I found out in a few towns the cost of winning one thousand customers.

Then I waited to see what those thousand would buy. Before branching out I always knew the cost per customer and the sale per customer. I let the thousands decide what the millions would do. When I did branch out I operated on a certainty.

That is why I have remained in advertising thirty-six years so far. That is why I have been trusted with the expenditure of $60,000,000. I limited losses.

The mistakes I made cost little. The successes made fortunes without risk.

With advertising ventures and advertising men the fatalities are enormous.

Nearly all the stars of advertising have perished before their prime. I believe that all of my early contemporaries are out of the field today. Many were brilliant men, but they made the mistake of working in the dark. They had no compass, so they landed on the rocks.

Another lesson I learned was the value of information.

It first was taught me in a pork-and-bean campaign. It had not been very successful, but the maker of the prod¬uct still believed in advertising. He was willing to venture another $400,000 on a logical plan.

I sent investigators from house to house to measure the situation. When their reports came in we found that ninety-four per cent of the housewives were baking their own beans. Only six per cent were buying any canned beans. Yet several makers were spending large sums to win that six per cent.

I went after the home bakers, the ninety-four per cent. I cited the sixteen hours of soaking, boiling and baking required on a dish of beans. I pictured the beans in glass dishes, crisped on the top, mushy in the middle, all under-baked, all hard to digest.

Then I told them how we baked in steam ovens, at a temperature of 245 degrees. How we baked without crisping, without breaking the beans. They came out nut-like, mealy and whole, fitted for easy digestion. I won on that line a place and a career in a great advertising agency—a career which continued for seventeen years, which brought me both fortune and fame.

All because I learned the situation and multiplied the power of my appeal.

Another lesson I learned was in the days of beer advertising.

All advertising brewers were then talking pure beer. They displayed the word “Pure” in big type. Finally one brewer used two pages, putting PU on one page and RE on the other, to make the “Pure” more emphatic. But it was all like dropping water on a duck.

One brewer who held fifth place asked me to take up his advertising. I went to a brewing school. Then I went through his brewery. I saw a plate-glass room where beer was cooled in filtered air. I saw the beer filtered through white pulp wood. Bottles were washed four times by machinery. Every pump and pipe was cleaned after every operation. The brewery was on the shore of Lake Michigan, but they bored down 4,500 feet to get still purer water.

I went to the laboratory and saw a mother yeast cell kept in glass. They told me that yeast had resulted from 1,200 experiments to get an ideal flavor. And that all the yeast used in that brewery was produced from that mother cell.

I was astounded. “Why,” I asked, “have you never told this story?” They told me that their methods formed common brewery practice. Any rival could claim whatever they claimed about them.

But I pictured that plate glass room and told of those filters and processes. In two years that brewery jumped from fifth place to first place. Largely because I gave convincing reasons for purity and flavor.

In the early days of automobile advertising there existed a general impression that profits were too high. In a line I was advertising our chief opportunity seemed to lie in combating that impression.

Others were claiming low prices and low profits. I came out with a headline, “Our Profit is 9 Per Cent.” I told the exact cost of engine, chassis, wheels, tires, etc. I cited exact costs of $762 on a $1,500 car, without mentioning body, top or un-holstery —the things most conspicuous in a car.

The success of that campaign taught me to be exact.

When we claim the best or the cheapest, people smile. That is advertising license. But when we state figures, they are either true or untrue, and people do not expect a reputable concern to lie. They accept the figures at par. Ever since then, whenever possible, I have stated my facts in figures.

In other ways I learned the fearful cost of changing people’s habits.

One was in a campaign on oatmeal, another on a dentifrice.

I tried to induce more people to eat oats, and I found that the cost of winning new users was vastly beyond any possible returns. I tried to convert new users to the tooth brush habit. As nearly as I could figure, the cost was $25 per convert. If all converts used our tooth paste all their lives we could scarcely get the money back.

So I quit that.

I am letting others convert people to new habits. I simply try to get them, when they are converted, to use my type of product. Since I learned that lesson, I have spent millions of dollars in advertising oatmeal and tooth pastes.

But I have never used one line, one word, to win people to a habit they have not as yet adopted.

I learned another lesson in connection with oatmeal.

We knew that countless people failed to serve oatmeal because of the time required for cooking.

So we put out a ready-cooked oatmeal called Two-Minute Oats. It was so flavory, so enticing, so easy to prepare that we wanted to jump into national advertising without the usual limited test. But we made the test, and we quickly found that people did not like Two-Minute Oats. It was a delightful product, but it did not taste like the oatmeals people knew. We were appealing to oatmeal users, and they all had certain educated tastes. They refused our innovation.

Later came another idea for quick-cooking oats. This method did not change the flavor. The advertiser did not think the idea worth a trial. They cited the fact that we had already failed on a quick-cooking oatmeal. But I argued the difference and urged them to submit the question to two thousand women. We did that at a cost of about $1,000— by buying a package of the new product for them.

We stated the facts, told them that here was a product with a flavor like the oatmeals they knew. But it cooked in three minutes. We wanted their verdict on it.

To the two thousand women who asked for a package we sent a letter stating the facts again. We said that it made no difference to us which type they preferred. We simply wanted to learn their choice. We enclosed a stamped envelope for their reply. Ninety-one per cent of those women voted for the new type, and the concern which makes it has gained a new hold on that field.

Good advertising is a matter of experience and experiment.

All of us make at least ten mistakes to every success we create.

Any of us, acting on judgment alone, would meet with quick disaster. This is truer now than ever. Advertising is more costly than it used to be. The competition is many times as severe. We cannot win out on a guess. We cannot hope to succeed unless we carefully test our ideas.

We cannot know enough people to measure up public opinion.

We cannot anticipate the wants, the prejudices or the idiosyncrasies which confront any new undertaking. We can learn only by experience.

We must feel our way, else the best man among us will soon find a precipice which may forever destroy men’s confidence in him.