By Claude C. Hopkins and Troy S. Laughren

© 2005 Troy S. Laughren All Rights Reserved
No part of this 2005 version May be reproduced in any form.

Pictures in advertising are very expensive.  Not in cost of good art work alone, but in the cost of ad space.  From one-third to one-half of an advertising campaign is often staked on the power of the pictures.

Anything expensive must be effective, otherwise it involves much waste.  So art in advertising is a study of paramount importance.

Pictures should not be used merely because they are interesting, or to attract attention or to decorate an ad.  We have covered these points before, but they are worth talking about in greater detail.  Ads are not written to interest, please or amuse.  You are not writing to please the masses.  You are writing on a serious subject - the subject of money-spending.  And you address a restricted minority.

Use pictures only to attract those who may profit you.  Use them only when they form a better selling argument than the same amount of space using words.

Mail order advertisers, as we have said, have pictures figured down to a science.  Some use large pictures, some small, some omit pictures entirely.  A noticeable fact is that none of them uses expensive artwork.  Be sure that all these things are done for reasons made apparent only by results.

Any other advertiser should apply the same principles.  Or, if none exist to apply to his product, he should work out his own by testing.  It is certainly unwise to spend large sums on a dubious adventure.

Pictures with many products form a major factor.  Omitting the products where the article itself should be pictured.  In some lines, like Arrow Collars and most in clothing advertising, pictures have proved most convincing.  Not only in picturing the collar or the clothes, but in picturing men whom others envy, in surroundings which others covet.  The pictures subtly suggest that these articles of apparel will aid men to those desired positions.

So with correspondence schools.  Theirs is tracked advertising.  Picturing men in high positions of taking upward steps forms a very convincing argument.

So with beauty products.  Picturing beautiful women, admired and attractive, is a supreme inducement.  But there is a great advantage in including a fascinating person.  Women desire beauty largely because of men.  Then show them using their beauty, as women do use it, to gain maximum effect with the opposite sex.

Advertising pictures should not be eccentric.  Don't treat your subject lightly.  Don't lessen respect for yourself or your article by any attempt at frivolity.  People do not patronize a clown.

An eccentric picture may do you serious damage.  One may gain attention by wearing a fool's cap.  But it would ruin selling prospects. Unfortunately this is the way of far too many advertisements.

A picture which is eccentric or unique takes attention from your subject.  You cannot afford to do that.  Your main appeal lies in the headline.  Over-shadow that and you kill it.  Don't, to gain general and useless attention, sacrifice the attention that you want.

Don't be like a salesperson who wears flashy clothes.  The small percentage he appeals to are not usually good buyers.  The great majority of the sane and thrifty heartily despise him.  Be normal in everything you do when you are seeking confidence and conviction.

Generalities cannot be applied to art.  There are seeming exceptions to most statements.  Each line must be studied by itself.

But the picture must help sell the goods.  It should help more than anything else could do in that same space, otherwise use that something else.

Many pictures tell a story better than type can do.  In the advertising of Puffed Grains the picture of the grains was found to be most effective.  They awake curiosity.  No figure drawing in that case compare in results with these pictures of grains.

Other pictures form a total loss.  We have stated cases of that kind.  The only way to know, as is with most other questions, is by comparing results.

Does it pay better to use fine art work or ordinary? Many years ago, some advertisers paid up to $2,000 per drawing, today that same art work can be as high as 2 hundred thousand dollars.  They figure that the space is expensive.  The art cost is small in comparison.  So they consider it worth its cost.

Others argue that few people have an art education.  They bring out their ideas, and bring them out well, at a fraction of the cost.  Mail order advertisers are generally in this class.

Certainly good art pays as well as mediocre.  And the cost of preparing ads is very small compared with the cost of insertion.

Should every ad have a new picture? Or may a picture be repeated? Both viewpoints have many supporters.  The probability is that repetition is a saving.  We are after new customers always. It is not probable that they remember a picture we have used before.  If they do, repetition does not detract from the second, third or forth ad.

Do color pictures pay better than black and white? Not generally, according to the evidence we have gathered to date.  Yet there are exceptions.  Certain food dishes look far better in colors.  Tests on products like oranges, desserts, etc... show that color does indeed pay.  Color comes close to placing the products on actual exhibition.

But color used to amuse or to gain attention is like anything else that we use for that purpose.  It may attract many times as many people, yet not secure a hearing from as many as we want.

The general rule applies.  Do nothing to merely interest, amuse, or attract.  That is not your province.  Do only that which wins the people you are after in the cheapest possible way.

But these are minor questions.  They are mere economies, not largely affecting the results of a campaign.

Some things you do may cut your results in half.  Yet other things can be done that multiply those results.  Minor costs are insignificant when compared with basic principles.  One person may do business in a shed, another in a palace.  That is of no importance.  The great question is one's power to get the maximum results.