The John Caples story.

THE JOHN CAPLES STORY

HE has been called the founding father, the dean, the master of modern direct response advertising. Lester Wunderman remembers him as "the North Star of creative copywriting...a brilliant light that all of us who followed him could navigate by." David Ogilvy says he

Who was John Caples? Where did he come from? Why such adulation?

He was born in upper Manhattan on May 1,1900. His father, originally from Fostoria, Ohio, was a recent graduate of the Bellevue Medical College and practiced medicine on Madison Avenue. His mother was studying arts and literature at Barnard College when she became pregnant with John. Caples' sprightly, 87-year-old widow, the former Dorothy Dickes, recalls her husband speaking of his mother's delight in having earned her "'MA' before her B.A."

Caples' mother read the classics aloud and encouraged her son to write at an extraordinarily young age. He attended the Horace Mann School, a private grade school affiliated with Columbia University.

At 12 years of age, Caples began to rebel against his sheltered childhood. Each Saturday morning he escaped to the hills of the Palisades across the river in New Jersey. According to Dorothy Caples, one of the local newspapers profiled the "12-year-old loner" who would "swim across the Hudson River." Concerned about their son, John's parents visited him in the woods and -- finally -- gave him a tent.

The adolescent John Caples continued to be an "outsider" when he switched from the exclusive Horace Mann School to the very public De Witt Clinton High School. He was all of a sudden forced to deal with kids who had always struggled to survive and were more aggressive than he was. His grades suffered but somehow he managed to get into Columbia University.

It was the middle of World War I. Caples became an apprentice seaman-student, training to become an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve. As a course requirement for freshman English, each student had to deliver a two-minute speech. Caples was terrified...so terrified that he cut class after class after class...until he could no longer go back. According to Caples, "At 18 I felt I was marked for failure for life!"

Annapolis

He brooded for a while, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy for four years. The war had ended, but Caples was now determined to make up for lost time. He wanted to take the competitive examinations for the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was assigned to a formal school for seamen operated as an adjunct to the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. He did extremely well in this structured environment and was formally admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, class of 1924.

Although the instruction at Annapolis was oriented toward engineering, Caples found a way to pursue his early interest in writing. He contributed poetry to, and eventually became an associate editor of the Annapolis Log.

Apparently, everything went smoothly at Annapolis until his senior year, when, once again, he found himself required to make a speech. This time, however, he had a roommate who was equally terrified. Together they polished off quite a bit of bootleg gin before heading to the dining room table to make their required after-dinner speeches. In Gordon White's book about him, Caples reveals: "I don't remember my speech at all! It is a perfect and absolute blank. I don't remember standing up. I don't remember saying a word. I don't remember sitting down. But I did make a speech!" (Eventually Caples took a course in public speaking at Columbia.)

In 1924, when Caples graduated from Annapolis, the general population had become disenchanted with the amount of money the government continued to channel to the military. As a consequence, graduating seniors from West Point and Annapolis were encouraged to leave the service and settle for B.S. degrees. Caples loved the Navy, but he found the pace of peacetime duty torturous. According to White, "He resigned his commission as an ensign in the United States Navy and went on a two-month canoe trip to Canada."

Career Counselor

Armed with a degree in engineering, Caples returned to Manhattan and joined the New York Telephone Company as a student engineer for $27 a week. Quickly becoming bored with his new daily regimen, he sought the advice of a professional career counselor, Dr. Katherine Blackford, whose ad he extracted from The New York Times. Her $25 fee was astronomical in those days, but Caples thought it was worth it.

After extensive drilling by Blackford, Caples waited 10 excruciatingly long days for a written report. When it finally arrived, he was stunned by its contents -- except for its conclusion: "I would not discourage you in your ambition to develop yourself for a writing career."

He then decided to consult Dr. Alvin Johnson, who had been his mother's economics professor, an editor at New Republic and active in launching the New School for Social Research. Johnson advised Caples that advertising would make him a better writer and would also make him more money.

Having already taken courses in short story and novel writing at Columbia University Night School, Caples signed up for two different night school courses: advertising principles and advertising research. From a woman in his research class, Caples heard about a job in advertising at the Certain-teed Products Company. Unable to transfer to the advertising department of New York Telephone, he took a job as assistant to the assistant advertising manager at Certain-teed. This turned out to be a lowly clerical job with long hours, so Caples quit after one month and searched for his next job, which would make him famous.

At this point, Caples was dead serious about getting a writing job at an advertising agency. He combed the agency directory he found at the New York Public Library for agencies with long client lists. Starting with "A" he called several who answered, "We're not hiring, call back." Never to be defeated again, Caples took a course in advertising copywriting with Bill Orchard that summer of 1925 and gained the experience and samples he needed to get his first copywriting job.

The position was at one of the leading mail order agencies of the day, Ruthrauff & Ryan. In Making Ads Pay (1957), Caples remembers his first assignment from Ev Grady, the copy chief, who asked him to go through two piles of ads and "try to figure out what the successful ads have got that the failures haven't got. Then when you write your own ads, try to put into them the things that will make them successful."

That seemingly small lesson one bright morning in September 1925 marked the beginning of a career in advertising that Phil Dusenberry, chairman and CEO for BBDO New York, recently described: "Few people ever reach the pinnacle of their chosen calling. But that's what John Caples achieved in the field of direct response advertising. And he just didn't enter that field, he took it by storm and changed it forever."

His first writing assignment was for a book on personal magnetism. His second, and first to see print, was for Arthur Murray Dance Studios. Supplied with this headline, "How A Faux Pas Made Me Popular," Caples was required to develop a story that would prompt readers to send for a 32-page booklet and test lesson.

Absorbing Grady's every lesson like a sponge, Caples learned that: 1) Headlines are the most important element of a successful ad; 2) Previous successes are like gold; 3) One of the most effective ways to sell an idea is by telling a story; 4) Grady's formula for headlines summed up in two words is "Curiosity...Reward"; and 5) Styles in advertising may change, but not the basic principles.

Now he was ready to write the ad for which he will always be remembered.

They Laughed...

Once given the assignment to write a headline for the U.S. School of Music, Caples studied proofs from previous ads -- just as he was taught by Grady -- and came up with several headlines. The famous "They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano..." ad was based on the previously successful "It Seemed So Strange to Hear Her Play." Caples thought, "If that ad was successful, why wouldn't it be even more effective to carry the idea further -- to have a larger audience -- to have a chap laughed at by his friends when he made believe he could play the piano, and then have him amaze his friends by playing wonderfully well?"

Caples' breakthrough ad was the "carrying further" of a previously successful idea. To those writers and artists who said that the reworking of old successes tends to hamper creative imagination, Caples uncharacteristically blasted: "All right, discard the tested formulas if you want to. Go back to the stone age! Throw away your tools and go into the woods and start catching birds with your bare hands and digging for edible roots with your fingernails!"

Caples believed with all his heart that "reworking old successes gives your imagination a higher platform to spring from," but he by no means discouraged new ideas. "At regular intervals try something utterly new and different,c he encouraged. "But don't forget to rework old successes," he always added.

Copywriters, columnists, cartoonists and comedians throughout the world borrowed "They Laughed" for years -- and so did Caples, as reflected in his next successful headline: "They Grinned When the Waiter Spoke to Me in French -- but their laughter changed to amazement at my reply."

Caples remained at Ruthrauff & Ryan until April 1927, when the father of a woman he was dating helped him land an interview with Bruce Barton of the Barton, Durstine & Osborn agency.

Barton and Caples ahd a brief meeting before Barton sent the shy celebrity to see one of his account executives, Bill Strong. He and Strong hit it off immediately and Caples became an assistant account executive on the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance account. He had learned about tested copy at Ruthrauff & Ryan; now he was to learn about copy testing at BDO. (In the fall of 1928, Barton, durstine & Osborn merged with The George Batten Company and became BBDO.)

Testing, Testing, Testing. . .

Caples was fascinated with the process of testing ads -- not only copy, but also media, position, size, color vs. black and white, seasonality, etc. He was hooked; he was obsessed; he was in love with the process of testing advertising methods; and he was unparalleled in his ability to first document and then apply the knowledge he gained from these tests to his next project.

In late 1928 he wrote the second advertisement to be included in Julian Watkins' 100 Greatest Advertisements (the first, of course, was "They Laughed. . ."). This ad was for Phoenix Mutual and its headline, "To Men Who Want To Quit Work Some Day," captured tons of leads -- and critical acclaim.

Although he worked for one of the world's largest "institutional" advertising agencies, Caples flaunted his mail order stripes as if he earned them in his beloved Navy. His first article to appear in print, "Why Mail Order Advertisements Have More Punch," carried the subhead, "Copy That Must Pull is Here compared with the Institutional Kind." As BBDO thrived on institutional advertising, Caples was identified only as an assistant account executive with "a large New York agency." Many years later, a top BBDO executive extracted a word from the proposed title of a new Caples book, and Making Small Ads Pay became Making Ads Pay, reportedly to protect client who shelled out big bucks for non-accountable, two-page spreads. Other than for these relatively minor concessions, Caples never let big, general agency politics force him to compromise his principles.

In the early 1930s, Advertising and Selling and Printer's Ink had published dozens of Caples articles. In 1932, the first of four editions of Tested Advertising Methods was published and received immediate success. Vintage Caples: "Every single element that is put into an advertisement -- headline, subhead, illustration, copy -- should be put there, not because it looks well, not because it sounds well, but because that type of headline or that type of illustration has proved itself to be more successful than any other type."

Caples was by no means the first to measure advertising. But a combination of his determination, creativity and the economic climate of the day helped him to carve out a niche for himself, perfect it, and selflessly pass it along to anyone who wanted to learn more about tested advertising methods.

He wrote two more books in the 1930s and co-authored a third one: Advertising for Immediate Sales (1936), Advertising Ideas (1938) and Copy Testing (1939). He latched onto split-run testing around 1935 when Family Circle and The New York Times Sunday Magazine made it available, and he tested every possible variable through the 1970s when he supervised 40-way split-runs in TV Guide.

Commander Caples

In 1941, at the start of World War II, BBDO won the U.S. Navy recruiting account and Caples, ex-Annapolis man -- and newly appointed vice president of BBD/ -- came up with dozens of appeals to entice men into the Navy. Each test advertisement included a coupon offering a free booklet about the Navy. (Here's the winning appeal: "Free Training That Is Worth $1,500." The second winner contained a picture of a sailor talking to a girl and saying, "Imagine Me Steering a Destroyer!")

All this Navy talk must have made Caples nostalgic. He volunteered for active duty as a Lieutenant Commander in March 1942, and was promoted to Commander, serving until the war's end in 1945. After the war, Caples received a letter of commendation from the Secretary of the Navy.

"Our Friday Doctor"

During the war, BBDO had retained Dr. Darrell B. Lucas, head of the marketing department of New York University, to help overhaul the entire BBDO research facility. With a gleam in her eyes, Dorothy Caples recalls how her husband used to refer to "Luke" as "our Friday doctor."

Lucas, who received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1928, insists "there was no one like John...His predecessors...Hopkins, etc. ...turned up little known principles, but John scoured the field and tried almost anything you could think of. He could have basked in the glory of his fame. Not so. John became much more interested in why and how some of his ads brought gratifying results and why others performed at a more modest level. And he made his principal mission to discover the answers and to let others know how to achieve similar success in getting results from appeals for direct action."

In 1950 Caples contributed "How To Test Your Copy" to the Advertising Handbook, edited by Roger Barton of Advertising Agency magazine. In the book, Barton points out that Caples was chairman of the A.A.A.A. Committee on Continuing Study of Newspaper Reading, a member of the Technical Committee of the Advertising Research Foundation, a member of the Copy Research Council in New York, and three times a member of the Jury of the Annual Advertising Awards.

Once again addressing the suggestion that copy testing might hamper creative thought, Caples insisted: "No. it guides creative thought into profitable channels. some of the most imaginative ads ever produced have been prepared by mail order writers whose advertisements are constantly subject to copy testing. copy testing also aids creative thought by permitting the ad writer to test a large number of highly imaginative ads at low cost. When you do not have a chance to pretest your ideas, you are more likely to produce safe, conservative advertisements. therefore, copy testing, which enables you to test a variety of ideas inexpensively, becomes a method for releasing creative thought rather than hampering creative thought."

Educator, Author, Lecturer

In the early 1950s, Bill Orchard, Caples' copywriting teacher in 1925, asked Caples to take over his class at Columbia University School of Business for the school year. Caples was flattered. As it turned out, the assignment lasted two years. Caples lectured also at the New York Advertising Club for 18 years. He wrote about his teaching experiences in his next book, Making Ads Pay, which was published in 1957.

Caples was indeed a specialist in testing. For 18 years he supervised a continuing test campaign for The Wall Street Journal; for nearly 20 years he tested copy for Reader's Digest. During his 57 years in advertising, John Caples wrote and tested copy for du Pont, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Lever Brothers, Liberty Mutual, Phoenix Mutual, Rexall, United Fruit, U.S. Steel and countless others.

His advice was never off-the-cuff. His reputation was such that a Caples suggestion meant it had been tested and proven to work.

According to Andi Emerson, chairman of the John Caples International Awards, at the Caples memorail service last June: "The honesty, integrity and consistency with which John practiced the art of copywriting...the humility, plain decency and human understanding which illuminated his work and caused it to be so effective in the marketplace...These are some of the reasons why John is so revered in the advertising community and why I founded the Caples Awards in his name 13 years ago."

Caples wrote a monthly column for this magazine for 10 years. He was a member of the Association of Direct Marketing Agencies, the Market Research Council and the Copy Research Council of New York. In 1969, he received the Annual Award of the Association of Direct Mail Writers (now the Direct Marketing Creative Guild). in 1972, he was presented with the Leadership Award of The Hundred Million Club (now the Direct Marketing Club of New York) and in 1978, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the board of trustees of Direct Marketing Day in New York.

In 1977, four years after he was inducted into the Copywriters Hall of Fame, Caples was elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame.

Slowing Down

Until he was forced to slow down at 82, due to a back injury, Caples awakened at 5 a.m. every morning, fixed himself some "Cambridge tea" and wrote in his diary for one hour. Then he took a short nap, got dressed and headed to his BBDO office. In Madison Avenue U.S.A., Martin Mayer described Caples as a "slight, handsome, gray-haired man with a dry, modest manner, no nonsense about him at all."

His final book, How to Make Your Advertising Make Money (1983) is a perfect example of Caples' "no nonsense" approach: "The purpose of this book is to give you the secrets of successful advertising that have been discovered in the last 50 years. These proven methods are not theoretical. They are based on actual sales results -- on evidence that can be measured and weighed."

In the foreword to the fourth edition of Tested Advertising Methods (1974), David Ogilvy wrote that John Caples was not only "an indomitable analyzer and teacher of advertising," he was also "a first-rate copywriter -- one of the most effective there has ever been."

John Caples did more for direct response advertising than any other human being. Let us hope the awards named for him serve not only as a reminder of the methods he left behind, but also as a permanent tribute to the man who devoted more than 60 years of his life to developing them.

"John had endless patience," his widow insists. Waving her hands for emphasis, she adds, "He could not be rushed."

Loren Granville, head of The Granville Group, an advertising, direct marketing and public relations task force, is awards chairman of the John Caples International Awards and a board member of the Direct Marketing Creative Guild. He is also editor of Creative Forum, its publication, and Day Break, the newsletter published by Direct Marketing Day in New Yor, Inc. He can be reached at 96 fifth Ave, New Y ork, NY 10011 -- 212/242-3700.