80% of people read headline, 20% of people read copy. True or urban legend?

Yep so true, and yet I can't tell you how many huge blocks of endless writings I see everyday from people who have not grasped this Concept


- Robert Andrew

Hi Kay,

I have to totally disagree with you on the assertion that marketing and advertising principles outlined by David Ogilvy (the Father of Advertising) are somehow obsolete because they were written in a different decade. What make a principle a "principle" is that it is true in all times and all situations, anything less is not a true principle.

David Ogilvy is the pioneer of current marketing science, the principles he discovered and documented are as true today as they were the day he documented them, and they will be just as true and useful 1000 years from now. To say otherwise is like saying modern science is no longer valid or useful because it is based on principles that were discovered and documented by Galileo Galilei 400 years ago. The passage of time does not change a truism.

If something works only during a contemporaneous period then it is a technique, not a principle. Ogilvy is considered the Father of Advertising because he documented and pioneered the principles used in all modern data-driven marketing methods, which are based upon the scientific method first documented by Galileo. His principles are the core of what is now known as Marketing Science. Just because Marketing Science was invented decades ago, it doesn't make it less valid today.

Personally, I think that Ogilvy's work is 100 times more relevant today than 99% of all best selling books on advertising and marketing that you see on Amazon today.

You cannot claim to be a competent marketer if you are not familiar with at least a dozen or so marketing principles documented and expertly explained by Ogilvy in his books. Perhaps you could learn them by reading or listening to other people that are familiar with his work, that have paraphrased or plagiarized his work, but give credit where it is due. It was heard first from books and films of David Ogilvy, now everyone just repeats what he has taught us all about marketing.

I guarantee you that if you read Ogilvy's books you will find nearly all of it transferable to Internet Marketing. Principles are true in all times and situations, else they are not true principles.

Personally I have seen tremendous lift in sales and advertising performance by implementing Ogilvy's principles in headlines alone. I have personally tested more than a million headlines over the years and have the data to prove his principles are indeed sound. My agency's training manual for ad copy writers borrows heavily from Ogilvy's work and are the baseline for Best Practices in ad copy standards at our ad agency.

The point that Ogilvy was making was about the role of a headline and it's importance in sales copy, as a principle. The role of a headline is to capture the attention of the reader. That has not changed with the passing of time. Today, just as it was in 1963, the role of a headline is to catch the readers attention.

If the headline fails at it's task it doesn't matter how good the rest of your sales copy is, because the majority of your audience are not reading it. You have to get people through an entrance for them to see what is in the rooms beyond. Your headline is the entrance to your sales copy that you must get your audience to go through before they read the rest of your sales copy. Sure, some people might bypass an entrance and look for a side door if the entrance seems uninviting, but you are going to be losing a lot of your audience without the clear and compelling entrance presented by your headline. Whether that number is exactly 80%, or not, is beside the point. The point is to understand the role of the headline and how the 80-20 rule applies to it.

Oh.. yeah... the 80-20 rule, that's from Ogilvy, like so much other stuff related to marketing. Most of what you already know about marketing came first from Ogilvy, and it is decades old, yet just as true today as ever.

Here's a clip of an appearance David Ogilvy made on the David Letterman show:


https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-A.../dp/190491537X

Rubbish!

The 80/20 rule, also known as the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity, or the Pareto principle, was first made popular in 1941 by management consultant Joseph Juran. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne in 1896.

I'm pretty sure Copyblogger copied the idea for his study from someplace else. Let's give credit to Pareto and Juran, the true originators of the principle that Copyblogger simply copied and validated.

Today more and more people have less and less time. It is still relevant but that is why it is different in my opinion. If it was 80/20 70 years ago, today the gap might be even more.

Yes we agree and i actually think that your correction (that this study was not from CopyBlogger) was quite important.