The copywriter who was job applicant #106...
And how his struggle created the most trusted copywriting primer in history.
Before we begin this week, I'd like to get people up to speed.
You see, I recently had a massive surge in subscribers, nearly a thousand within the last week(more on this later).
I've been running a short series these past few weeks on often neglected pre-internet copywriters who made it big and how we’d be wise to reverse engineer them.
Last week's focus was Eugene Schwartz, arguably the most ingenious copywriter who ever lived.
The “assembler” as many copywriters think of him. The sort of guy who could pull water from a stone.
This week's focus is Claude Hopskins, the copywriter who proved copywriting is a science (This email was also inspired by a lot of the nonsense advice out there in the copywriting world).
Born in 1866, he worked his way into the business world from humble beginnings.
His big break came at Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company, where he applied a simple but revolutionary concept: give people what they want.
By the early 1900s, Hopkins had built himself into the undisputed king of Grand Rapids advertising.
He had built a new home, enjoyed prestige throughout the city, and commanded respect from every business leader in town. All his friends were there. He knew his place and his worth.
He was the end result of a highly paid in-house copywriter. Like a modern day FAANG copywriter.
But ambition called.
When Swift & Company, the Chicago meatpacking giant with $15 million in capital, advertised for an advertising manager with a $300,000 annual budget, Hopkins couldn't resist. This would place them among America's largest advertisers at the time.
In his Michigan field, he was king. He never dreamed that other potentates might treat him as a slave.
So confidently as a small-town advertising king, Hopkins walks into the Swift & Company offices in Chicago, ready to claim his new position as advertising manager.
He smiled at me benevolently and asked for my name and address. Then he wrote my name down on a sheet which held many names before mine.
"What are all those names?" I asked.
"Why, they are other applicants!" said Mr. Rich.
"There are one hundred and five of them. Your number is one hundred and six."
This was Claude C. Hopkins' brutal introduction to big-city advertising. The man who would later command a $185,000 salary (worth $5.8 million today) was just another face in a crowd of hopefuls.
But here's where it gets interesting...
Instead of slinking back to Grand Rapids with his tail between his legs, Hopkins did something that would change advertising forever.
He spent the next three weeks launching the most systematic self-promotion campaign in advertising history.
He contacted every advertising agent in Chicago. He visited every business leader in Grand Rapids.
He even wrote daily newspaper articles, all designed to prove he deserved that job.
The result? He got the position.
But that was just the beginning of his struggle.
His new boss, G.F. Swift, took an "intense dislike" to him. Swift saw Hopkins as a money-wasting poet in a business built on "sheer force." Hopkins went from being the king of his small pond to trembling whenever Swift walked by saying
“Among the many who trembled at his word, I always trembled most”.
The pressure was crushing. After six weeks, sales had barely moved. Swift was ready to fire him.
Hopkins' main responsibility was Cotosuet, a butter substitute competing against the much stronger established brand Cottolene.
The N.K. Fairbank Company had a significant head start with their product, and Swift & Company expected Hopkins to quickly overtake and defeat this entrenched competitor.
Facing skepticism from leadership about the slow initial results, Hopkins knew he had to act fast.
He couldn't rely on traditional advertising methods, he needed something dramatic that would generate immediate sales and prove his worth.
His solution was revolutionary for its time: instead of trying to convince people through logical arguments, he would create sensations that naturally led them to buy.
Hopkins pioneered the use of dramatic promotional stunts and public demonstrations, blending direct response techniques with bold public engagement.
His breakthrough campaign involved building massive cakes using Cotosuet and displaying them in major department stores across multiple cities.
The spectacle drew enormous crowds, sometimes requiring police intervention to control them, and generated immediate, measurable sales increases.
This innovative approach not only saved his job but demonstrated his ability to overcome resistance through inventive advertising strategies.
He had proven that advertising could be both scientific and spectacular, setting the foundation for principles that would later make him legendary.
Hopkins' real scientific breakthrough came later in 1915, when he took on Pepsodent toothpaste, when he, like a scientist, replicated his results from Swift and Co.
Hopkins had already built a strong reputation with successful campaigns for other products. A friend and the maker of Pepsodent toothpaste approached him to create a national promotional campaign.
Picture America in the early 1900s: Only 7% of people brushed their teeth daily. Everyone accepted that tooth decay was inevitable. Tooth decay and bad teeth were just part of life.
A combination of factors contributed to this widespread poor oral hygiene, including a lack of public health education, the high cost of dental care, and a diet increasingly full of sugar.
Cultural and economic factors made it worse.
In the early 20th century, the medical and public health fields were still developing their understanding of hygiene and preventative care.
Most people saw dental care as a last resort for severe pain or decay, not as a daily practice to maintain health.
This attitude led to a thriving market for home remedies and crude extractions performed by barbers. Ouch!
While modern-style toothbrushes existed in the 1800s, they were expensive and not widely used.
Toothpaste was often sold in powders or pots, adding to the inconvenience and cost for the average household.
Dental insurance didn't exist until the 1950s, making professional cleanings and treatments a financial strain for most people.
The increasing availability of sugar and processed carbohydrates led to a surge in dental health problems. While earlier humans on hunter-gatherer diets had relatively healthy teeth, the transition to farming and modern eating habits contributed to more cavities.
The Pepsodent company wanted ads promoting the benefits of brushing, preventing tooth decay and disease.
Hopkins saw this as boring. Nobody cared about some vague future problem.
So he shifted the conversation entirely.
Instead of talking about decay, Hopkins talked about beauty.
He created two simple concepts: "the film" (that fuzzy feeling on unbrushed teeth) and "the tingle" (the fresh feeling after brushing).
Suddenly, tooth decay wasn't just a health issue, it was a beauty problem. And ugly teeth made you less attractive and desirable.
His first ads didn't even ask people to buy Pepsodent. They offered free samples. People had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
The response was staggering: 1,000 requests for every 5,000 newspapers that ran the ad.
By the 1930s, daily tooth brushing had jumped from 7% to 65% of Americans. Hopkins hadn't just sold toothpaste, he'd created an entire industry and changed a nation's habits.
This replicated “scientific” experience taught Hopkins the scientific principles that would make him legendary:
- Why "dignified" advertising fails (and what works instead)
- The power of dramatic demonstration over logical argument
- How to make people buy without feeling "sold to"
- The secret of turning products into sensations
- Why testing and measuring beats guessing every time
Hopkins documented these hard-won lessons in "Scientific Advertising", a book that transformed him from a well paid employee into a handful of the highest-paid copywriters of his era.
And his biggest clientless copywriting product: Something he made and sold for himself.
Jay Abraham, the legendary marketing consultant, said he would only hire copywriters who had read this book at least 10 times. There's a reason for that standard.
"Scientific Advertising" remains the most trusted beginner copywriting book 100+ years later.
And as usual with these pre-internet giants, it sold millions of copies, still being sold today.
Every copywriter worth his salt and serious about this biz has a copy.
I’m looking at a yellow, soft cover copy sitting on my desk as I write this email.
The man who struggled to prove himself worthy of job #106 with his trial-and-error approach, testing everything, measuring results, refining based on data had created something more valuable than any single campaign: a system that turns advertising from guesswork into science.
His book is less than 100 pages and available free online. Read it over this weekend if you haven’t.
Fathi
