The Most Important Meeting in Advertising History

How a former Canadian Mountie sitting in a saloon changed advertising history with just three words

Dear Marketing Maven,

Long before David Ogilvy...

Long before Claude Hopkins...

Long before Rosser Reeves…

Long before there were any copywriting superstars…

There was Albert Lasker.

Today, Lasker's name isn't nearly as well-known as those advertising legends. But many historians consider him the greatest advertising copywriter and marketing executive in history. As the driving force behind Chicago's Lord & Thomas agency, he transformed a modest regional firm into the largest and most influential advertising agency in America.

By most estimates, Lasker also became the richest copywriter who ever lived, thanks to a simple three-word phrase a former Canadian Mountie shared with him.

Here’s the true story…

Albert Lasker joined the Lord & Thomas ad agency in 1900 as a teenager, initially intending to stay briefly before returning to his first love, journalism.

However, his extraordinary talent for winning and managing new accounts quickly made him the agency’s star revenue producer.

Young as he was, by 1904 he was a partner in the firm and its General Manager.

Yet for all his success, he was frustrated — deeply frustrated. He dreamed of building the finest advertising agency in the world. But he was frustrated by a question that no one seemed able to answer.

Exactly what IS advertising?

He asked agency owners.

He asked experienced copywriters.

He asked successful businessmen.

He asked anyone he thought might know.

But their answers never satisfied him. Many called advertising “news.” Others called it “publicity.” Some said it was simply a way of attracting attention.

But none of these definitions explained why one advertisement could trigger sales of many thousands of orders while others merely occupied expensive space on a newspaper page with nary an inquiry in response.

Lasker wasn't looking for a clever definition. He was searching for a principle. He wanted to understand what made advertising persuasive.

A Fateful Message from the Saloon Downstairs

One afternoon, something extraordinary happened that would change Lasker’s life. A messenger entered his office carrying a handwritten note. It had come from a complete stranger.

The note said: “I am in the saloon downstairs. I can tell you what advertising is. I know you don't know. It will mean much to me to have you know — and much to you. If you wish to know, send the word ‘Yes’ down by the bellboy.”

Most executives would have tossed the note into the wastebasket. Fortunately for advertising history, Albert Lasker was too curious.

He sent back a one-word reply. “Yes.”

A few minutes later the stranger entered his office. His name was John E. Kennedy.

Kennedy had once served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Later he drifted into advertising, where he became convinced that the industry misunderstood its own purpose.

Lasker invited him to sit down and immediately asked him, “OK, what is advertising?”

Kennedy answered with a question of his own. “What do you think it is?”

“News,” Lasker replied.

Kennedy smiled. “No,” he said. “News is merely a way of presenting it.”

Then he picked up a piece of paper. Across it he wrote three words…

“Salesmanship in Print”

Three ordinary words. But they changed advertising forever.

Kennedy’s three words electrified Lasker.

In an instant, Lasker saw all of advertising through a different lens. If advertising is salesmanship in print, then every advertisement should do what a master face-to-face salesperson does: give a clear and believable reason why their product or service is superior to their competition’s in satisfying a consumer want.

This new definition meant that advertising is not some mysterious art. It’s a selling process. It could be studied. Improved. Refined. Above all, ads could be scientifically tested and measured against one another, enabling a smart marketer to know exactly which ads reliably generate more sales and profits beyond their expense and, just as important, which ads did nothing but regularly squander small fortunes.

You’re hired!

Lasker was so taken by Kennedy’s three-word insight that he immediately seized upon it as the opportunity of a lifetime. Here’s what he did…

1. Lasker hired Kennedy almost immediately. Given the average annual incomes of that time, Lasker offered Kennedy a salary roughly equivalent to a multi-million-dollar yearly income in today’s money.

2. Lasker and Kennedy then codified the principles of what they called “Reason-Why” advertising, meaning that every ad should not only make a clear-cut promise to its target market, but also provide specific reasons why the promise could be believed.

3. Based on this clear-eyed definition of advertising, Lasker transformed his agency from a space broker into a masterful sales force on behalf of his clients. Before this historic meeting between Kennedy and Lasker, ad agencies were largely brokers of newspaper and magazine space. They bought space and resold it to advertisers. Agencies would then prepare a bit of copy and artwork, mostly uninspired announcements of products or services available at a given location.

But thanks to Kennedy’s revolutionary definition of advertising as salesmanship in print, Lasker now made copywriting, and not media buying, the central function of his advertising agency.

Now, instead of merely buying and selling newspaper space, Lord & Thomas became known as the agency with an extraordinary copy department — a unique, massively efficient sales force for hire that could make a highly effective sales presentation not to just one person at a time, but to thousands or even millions of prospects at once! This was an incredible, revolutionary increase in selling productivity that corporate America had never witnessed.

To earn their keep, Lasker’s copywriters had to answer this question in every ad they wrote: What’s the reason why our prospects should buy this product instead of a competitor’s offering? And we cannot settle for just an idle claim. What’s the persuasive evidence?

In short, their ad formula became: Claim → Reason Why → Evidence → Attractive Purchase Opportunity

On a nationwide scale, in a very short time, this “reason why” advertising style changed advertising from mere “announcement of availability” into a potent force of mass persuasion.

4. Lasker made advertising measurable. Lasker and his star copywriters, one of whom was the brilliant Claude Hopkins, pioneered test marketing and extensive use of coupons and sampling to measure response. One Van Camp campaign generated more than 1.46 million coupon responses.

5. Lasker used small tests to reduce the financial risk of big campaigns. In presentations to his clients, Lasker would explain that salespeople are judged by how much they sell. Therefore, an advertisement ought to be judged the same way.

Lasker and Hopkins developed methods of test marketing, keyed coupons, sampling, and measurable response before committing enormous sums to national campaigns. Their philosophy was: let’s find out what sells on a small, inexpensive scale, then roll it out.

6. Lasker used his split-run testing methodology to attract many new clients. Lasker was so confident in his new science of salesmanship in print that he was willing to let the marketplace decide.

He’d explain to potential new clients that since advertising is salesmanship in print, an obvious question naturally follows: If two salespeople compete, how do you know which is better? You look at the sales each has made in the same time period.

Why not do the same with your advertising? He’d urge them to run a simple test of the client’s current advertising against a campaign created by Lasker’s superstar copy department.

He’d explain that Lasker’s team would run the two different ad concepts simultaneously in two comparable, isolated markets (e.g., two similar Midwestern towns) for several months. By tracking sales in each location, the client could easily prove which copy strategy drove more sales and profits.

Then, just to be sure, they’d switch the campaigns for an equal time period, with the client’s own ad running where Lasker’s ad had run and vice versa. And then they’d compare sales results.

The potential client would have clear-cut evidence of which campaign generated the most sales and profits in both test markets. This meant that the winning advertisement — not the loudest opinion in the conference room — would settle the argument of which ad sells more.

Many potential clients found this proposition irresistible.

7. Lasker also revolutionized market research. His agency’s guiding research principle was: Don't ask people whether they like the ad. Ask whether the ad caused them to act!

Working together at Lord & Thomas, Lasker and Kennedy built campaign after campaign on the principles above.

The results were spectacular. Clients prospered. Lord & Thomas became the dominant advertising agency of its era. More importantly, Kennedy's philosophy spread throughout the profession and became known as the “Reason Why” school of advertising.

As Lord & Thomas ads powerfully outperformed and dominated in an ever-wider range of media besides newspapers, Kennedy’s three-word definition evolved from “salesmanship in print” to “multiplied salesmanship,” so it could include all media — radio, TV, and right up to today’s Internet, YouTube, you name it.

More than a century after that fateful meeting in 1904, nearly every successful direct-response campaign — and scores of enlightened brands with marketers smart enough to measure the sales impact of each ad — all trace their ancestry and marketing success to those three simple words on Kennedy’s handwritten note.

Lasker’s methodology worked brilliantly — and still does to this day — not just for direct response products, but all types of products and services.

Inspired by Kennedy, Lasker and his team pioneered the principle — and proved it! — that science and measurement of success are as necessary in advertising as in medicine, engineering, economics, finance, technology, any human effort where we want to test and scientifically measure how effectively one approach works compared with others.

One of the Richest Men in Advertising History

Thanks to Lasker’s innovations, his agency generated billions of dollars in modern-adjusted revenue in years when there were no income taxes or very low tax brackets compared to today.

He lived like royalty, spending lavishly on real estate, art, and personal hobbies. His flagship residence was Mill Road Farm, a massive 480-acre estate in Lake Forest, Illinois. It included a 26-room French Provincial manor, more than two dozen outbuildings, formal gardens, and a private, full-length 18-hole championship golf course that cost millions to build and maintain solely for his private enjoyment.

Lasker also amassed a world-renowned art collection, holding masterworks by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Van Gogh. He owned a fleet of cars, thoroughbred racehorses, and held controlling shares in the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

Lasker also donated enormous sums to charity, particularly late in life and in his estate, creating a legacy that remains highly active even today. Indeed, The Lasker Foundation remains one of the most prestigious science foundations in the world. It presents the annual Lasker Awards (often called "America's Nobels"), which recognize groundbreaking medical research. Dozens of Lasker Award recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, based on their scientific breakthroughs. And that seems quite appropriate for the man who brought scientific testing and measurement to advertising.

And that brings us back to a saloon in Chicago more than a century ago, when John E. Kennedy handed Albert Lasker a scrap of paper containing only three words:

Salesmanship in Print

Those three words didn't simply give the world its first “light-bulb-over-the-head” moment of what advertising really is. They revealed the surest way to improve our skill sets. They have taught us to ask ourselves this question:

How can we become more effective salespeople ... one advertisement at a time?

That’s what these Maxims are designed to teach.

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

Gary Bencivenga

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