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# Where great ads come from
- URL: https://kelfordinc.com/where-great-ads-come-from/
- Published: 2023-07-19T10:22:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-27T17:29:46.000Z
- Description: The key to Scientific Advertising
- Author: Joel Kelly
- Tags: Daily Labs, books, experiment, failure, advertising, practice, mistake

The most influential and successful advertising writer of the 20th century, Claude C. Hopkins, revealed his secrets this way:

> “How have I been able to win from this situation so many great successes?  
>  
> **Simply because I made so many mistakes in a small way, and learned something from each. I made no mistake twice.**  
>  
> Every once in a while I developed some great advertising principle.  
>  
> That endured.”

Hopkins pioneered the idea of “Scientific Advertising” (against which the 1960s “Creative Revolution” was pitted) and laid out his process:

> “Every advertising venture in its initial stage means simply feeling the public pulse.  
>  
> If people do not respond, the fault often lies with the product, or to circumstances beyond control.  
>  
> The loss is a trifle, if anything, in ventures which are rightly conducted.  
>  
> **Hopes and ideas which fail to pan out are mere accidents.”**

So remember this: Making lots of mistakes, trying lots of things, and learning from every single one is *not* failure.

**That’s what *success looks like*.**

🧠

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