What I learned from reading Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.
Human nature is perpetual in most respects.
It is the same today as the time of Caesar.
So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring.
You will never need to unlearn what you learn about them.
We learn, for instance, that curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives.
We employed it whenever we can.
Puffed wheat and puffed rice were made successful largely through curiosity.
For them, we used headlines like food shot from guns.
125 million steam explosions caused in every kernel.
These foods were failures.
Before that factor was discovered, we learned that people judge largely by price.
They are not experts.
In the British National Gallery is a painting which is announced in the catalogue to have cost $750,000.
Most people at first pass it by at a glance.
Then later they learn what the painting cost.
They return and surround it.
A department store advertised a $100 hat, and the floor could not hold the women who came to see it.
We often employ this factor.
Perhaps we are advertising a valuable formula.
To merely say that would not be impressive.