Demonstration — The Most Potent of All Persuasion Tools

Dear Marketing Maven,

Claude Hopkins, the Founding Father of copywriting, once said, "No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration."

Hopkins' active career as a professional copywriter spanned roughly 30 to 35 years, from the early 1890s through his retirement in 1923. He spent much of his career looking for ways to create powerful demonstrations that would explode sales for his clients. He succeeded brilliantly. For example…

The World's Largest Cake

Early in his career, Hopkins was tasked with selling Cotosuet, a mass-produced "compound lard" designed to be a cheaper substitute for butter in cooking and baking.

Sales were dismal because bakers and home cooks didn't believe a substitute could perform as well as real butter. Instead of arguing with them in print, Hopkins went to a bakery and had them bake the largest cake in the world—using only Cotosuet.

He placed the gargantuan cake in Rothschild's Department Store in Chicago. He commanded his crew to "build it as high as the room," which in those days would have likely been 10 to 12 feet or higher.

He then ran ads offering prizes to anyone who could guess the cake's weight, with one catch: to submit a guess, you had to buy a pail of Cotosuet. Over 105,000 people climbed four flights of stairs to see the colossal cake. Police had to control the crowds. On the heels of Hopkins' ads and the enormous free publicity, the product went from being a red ink loser to massive success virtually overnight.

(Footnote: Nobody today knows how much the monster cake weighed or how tall it was. Cotosuet's reign ended abruptly starting in 1911, when Procter & Gamble introduced a revolutionary new product: Crisco. But Cotosuet was a major success until then, selling millions of pounds.)

Cereal Shot from Guns

When Hopkins took on Quaker Oats' new puffed rice and wheat cereals, they were selling poorly. He discovered that their unique manufacturing process involved sealing grains in bronze tubes, heating them, and creating pressure that caused the grains to explode to eight times their normal size.

Most copywriters, if asked to promote these cereals, would likely show no interest in describing such an arcane manufacturing process. But Hopkins seized on it.

His ads created great curiosity with headlines boldly announcing, "Food Shot from Guns!" He explained how this bizarre production process "exploded" rice and wheat to become lighter and more airy than any other breakfast food. The benefit? "The grains are puffed to eight times their normal size. They become thin, crisp, porous wafers ... tasting like toasted nuts."

Thanks to this vivid mental imagery, millions started buying Quaker Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat. The campaign didn't just cause a brief spike in sales; it built an empire. The "Shot from Guns" angle was so incredibly effective that Quaker Oats continued to use variations of that exact same marketing hook for decades, long after Hopkins retired. It fundamentally changed the eating habits of a massive segment of the US population.

Pepsodent's "Film Test"

Believe it or not, brushing teeth was a rare habit in America in Hopkins' day. But when he landed the Pepsodent account, he decided to change that. He didn't rely on scientific jargon about plaque or tartar. Instead, he created a demonstration readers could perform on themselves while reading his ad.

He wrote: "Run your tongue across your teeth. You will feel a film—that's what makes your teeth look dingy." With that single theme, he made an invisible problem immediately tangible to vast portions of the US population. By providing a physical, interactive demonstration of the problem, the solution (Pepsodent) became an instant necessity, effectively creating our modern toothbrushing habit.

And Hopkins wasn't the only master marketer who loved demonstrations.

Steve Jobs and His "Manila Envelope"

When Steve Jobs introduced the original MacBook Air in 2008, he could have easily stood on stage and rattled off its unprecedented thin dimensions (0.76 inches tapering down to a razor-thin 0.16 inches). Instead, he noted that the computer was "so thin it even fits inside one of these envelopes that we've all seen floating around the office."

He then casually unwound the string of a standard inter-office manila envelope and pulled the laptop out to a chorus of gasps from the audience. Without a single bullet point, this demonstration instantly cemented the Air's position as the world's coolest, most portable laptop.

To this day, the MacBook Air dominates global laptop sales.

But wait, there's more!

And of course, no tribute to breakthrough advertising demonstrations would be complete without a tip of the hat to Ron Popeil. He didn't just tell his television audiences that his knives were sharp. He famously used one to cut a solid copper penny in half, and then he immediately used that exact same blade to slice a soft, delicate tomato paper-thin. It was the purest form of immediate, irrefutable visual proof.

His iconic inventions—like the Showtime Rotisserie, the Veg-O-Matic, and the Pocket Fisherman—generated more than $2 billion in retail sales.

To cap off his phenomenal run in direct response marketing, he sold his company, Ronco, for $55 million in 2005. At the time of his passing in 2021 at age 86, his net worth was estimated to be between $100 million and $200 million.

Promotion for a Direct Response Ad Agency

I once was the Copy Chief at a small ad agency that wanted to grow. I wrote the ad you'll find at the link below. It was our Demonstration in Print. Result: we quickly attracted all the clients we could handle.

Click the link below for the…

Ad Agency Risk-Free Demonstration Ad

This ad is one of my favorites, as it is filled with multiple proof elements from top to bottom, especially the eye-catching offer.

In closing, demonstrations are so strong because they provoke curiosity and provide immediate, powerful proof, both of which are potent response boosters. Whatever products or services you promote, challenge your imagination to come up with dramatic demonstrations of proof.

Thanks to Claude Hopkins, we have a maxim to leverage our persuasive powers:

Maxim #18:
"No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration."

Sincere wishes for a good life and (always!) higher response,

Gary Bencivenga

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