(Why He’d Crush Your 2026 Ad Account)

I saw an article that asked, “If you could raise any creative person from the dead, whom would you hire?” I can name a few living ones I’d poach tomorrow (Rand Fishkin and April Dunford, for starters). The dead-guy requirement made me think harder. I landed on Claude Hopkins.

Not that Claude. The other one. The guy who was writing scroll-stopping headlines a century before anybody scrolled.

Drop him into Google Ads, Reddit, X, or Meta today and he’d have your cost per lead cut in half by Wednesday. Then he’d ask why nobody tested the second headline.

Who was Claude Hopkins?

Hopkins was born in Michigan in 1866 and started out keeping books, not writing ads. He talked his way into copy at Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company, where he mailed 5,000 letters pitching carpet sweepers as Christmas gifts. A thousand people ordered. That’s a 20% response rate, and your email platform would like a word.

In 1907, Albert Lasker hired him at Lord & Thomas in Chicago for $185,000 a year. That’s roughly $6.4 million in today’s money. For a copywriter. Remember that the next time someone tells you AI made writing worthless.

Hopkins ran the agency as president and chairman, retired, then wrote Scientific Advertising (1923) and his autobiography, My Life in Advertising (1927). He died in 1932. Decades later, David Ogilvy said nobody should be allowed near advertising until they’d read Scientific Advertising seven times. Coming from Ogilvy, that’s officially a job requirement.

Three ads that still work

Schlitz beer

Hopkins toured the brewery and learned the bottles were washed with live steam. Every brewery did that. None of them talked about it. Hopkins did, and Schlitz suddenly looked like the only clean beer in America. Your “boring” process is somebody’s reason to buy. You’re just not telling them.

Quaker Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice

The grain was puffed under high pressure, so Hopkins called it “Food Shot from Guns.” Three words do the heavy lifting. Try writing a better Meta hook in 2026. I’ll wait.

Pepsodent

Hopkins didn’t sell toothpaste. He sold a problem you could feel. The ads told readers, “Just run your tongue across your teeth. You’ll feel a film.” They did. Then Pepsodent removed it. He’s credited with turning daily tooth-brushing into an American habit, which is a decent result for a newspaper ad. Every “Did you know?” carousel on LinkedIn is a weak cover of this song.

Why he’d crush your ad account in 2026

Hopkins tested everything. He keyed coupons so he knew exactly which ad, headline, and offer produced orders, then pitted them against each other (old skool A/B testing!). Newspaper space cost serious money, so every word had to pay its own freight. Trade “newspaper space” for “CPM” and nothing has changed.

Your ad gets about a second on a phone before a thumb moves on. Brevity and the hook aren’t style choices anymore. They’re survival.

He also had zero patience for cleverness for its own sake. His line was “People do not buy from clowns.”

Specific beats vague.

Numbers beat adjectives.

Reasons beat vibes.

He’d take one look at the AI-generated “unlock your potential” copy flooding everyone’s feed and climb right back into the ground.

And he loved free samples, delivered by coupon, because a good product sells itself once someone tries it. In 2026 we call that freemium or a lead magnet. Same trick, new collar.

Read the books

If you don’t know Hopkins, get Scientific Advertising and My Life in Advertising (usually sold together as two books in one). Your copywriting will be better before you’re halfway through.

Then open your ad account and ask the Hopkins question: what did we test this week, and what did it prove? If the answer is “nothing,” you’re not doing scientific advertising. You’re just advertising.