We Convert Or Else: Are We Still Struggling to Be Creative?

During March’s Conversion Conference final keynote “Confessions of a Conversion Rate Optimizer” I shared this 7 minute video from advertising legend David Oglivy of a impassioned speech “We Sell or Else” he gave to a group of direct marketers in the 1960s. He was a huge student of Claude Hopkins “Scientific Advertising” first published in 1923 and a huge advocate of “if it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”  It was required reading for David Oglivy’s employees and should be for yours as well.

Here we are some 80+ years after Mr. Hopkins advised marketers how important it was not to argue about what works in a campaign but to bring things to the court of last resorts, your customers by testing. Listen to David Oglivy’s speech today and you’ll see how these incredible words still are meaningful today as we continue to struggle with marketing directly to consumers, expecially as the equation has been turned around.