Haven’t really posted about new old books on marketing or advertising I’ve found lately, but here’s my latest old book! 😂
If you must know, I used to get people telling me that old books on advertising and selling are useless and that the “golden age of advertising is over”…
But do tell me again how human behaviour has changed over the past 3,000 years…? 🤔
Find an old book today if you can. The lessons it teaches from more experienced people than you and I have been forgotten by men and women who pride themselves on being “modern”.
Two recommended “old books” to get started with:
– Tested Advertising Methods (4th edition), by John Caples- Scientific Advertising and My Life In Advertising, by Claude Hopkins
Also, if digital marketing is your thing, here’s something you probably didn’t realize… before digital marketing was “digital marketing”, it was actually called direct marketing.
From the 1930’s, direct marketing involved A/B testing, and various other tests to see which and what got in the most sales. Those people lived and died by the amount of sales their copywriting and marketing collateral brought in.
The only difference between direct marketing (back then) and digital marketing (assuming both are done with the purpose of getting leads and sales), is the speed of getting back test results.
In the old days, you had to wait months to get coupons mailed back, and then manually tabulated to see what worked. Today, you probably just have to wait a week or two to see the results of your tests.
So, if you want to get better in digital marketing, pick up a good old book on it. Scientific Advertising is one of them.
The other title I recommend, which isn’t that old, but written by an old guy, is Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing by Drayton Bird. He used to work with David Ogilvy himself.
