One day in the early 1900s, a prominent American executive named
\nClaude C. Hopkins was approached by an old friend with a new
\nbusiness idea. The friend had discovered an amazing product, he
\nexplained, that he was convinced would be a hit. It was a toothpaste, a
\nminty, frothy concoction he called \u201cPepsodent.\u201d There were some
\ndicey investors involved\u2014one of them had a string of busted land
\ndeals; another, it was rumored, was connected to the mob\u2014but this
\nventure, the friend promised, was going to be huge. If, that is, Hopkins
\nwould consent to help design a national promotional campaign.
\nHopkins, at the time, was at the top of a booming industry that had
\nhardly existed a few decades earlier: advertising. Hopkins was the man
\nwho had convinced Americans to buy Schlitz beer by boasting that the
\ncompany cleaned their bottles \u201cwith live steam,\u201d while neglecting to
\nmention that every other company used the exact same method. He
\nhad seduced millions of women into purchasing Palmolive soap by
\nproclaiming that Cleopatra had washed with it, despite the sputtering
\nprotests of outraged historians. He had made Puffed Wheat famous by
\nsaying that it was \u201cshot from guns\u201d until the grains puffed \u201cto eight
\ntimes normal size.\u201d He had turned dozens of previously unknown
\nproducts\u2014Quaker Oats, Goodyear tires, the Bissell carpet sweeper,
\nVan Camp\u2019s pork and beans\u2014into household names. And in the
\nprocess, he had made himself so rich that his best-selling
\nautobiography, My Life in Advertising, devoted long passages to the
\ndifficulties of spending so much money.
\nClaude Hopkins was best known for a series of rules he coined
\nexplaining how to create new habits among consumers. These rules
\nwould transform industries and eventually became conventional
\nwisdom among marketers, educational reformers, public health
\nprofessionals, politicians, and CEOs. Even today, Hopkins\u2019s rules
\ninfluence everything from how we buy cleaning supplies to the tools
\ngovernments use for eradicating disease. They are fundamental to
\ncreating any new routine.
\nHowever, when his old friend approached Hopkins about
\nPepsodent, the ad man expressed only mild interest. It was no secret
\nthat the health of Americans\u2019 teeth was in steep decline. As the nation
\nhad become wealthier, people had started buying larger amounts of
\nsugary, processed foods. When the government started drafting men
\nfor World War I, so many recruits had rotting teeth that officials said
\npoor dental hygiene was a national security risk.
\nYet as Hopkins knew, selling toothpaste was financial suicide. There
\nwas already an army of door-to-door salesmen hawking dubious tooth
\npowders and elixirs, most of them going broke.
\nThe problem was that hardly anyone bought toothpaste because,
\ndespite the nation\u2019s dental problems, hardly anyone brushed their
\nteeth.
\nSo Hopkins gave his friend\u2019s proposal a bit of thought, and then
\ndeclined. He\u2019d stick with soaps and cereals, he said. \u201cI did not see a
\nway to educate the laity in technical tooth-paste theories,\u201d Hopkins
\nexplained in his autobiography. The friend, however, was persistent.
\nHe came back again and again, appealing to Hopkins\u2019s considerable
\nego until, eventually, the ad man gave in.
\n\u201cI finally agreed to undertake the campaign if he gave me a six
\nmonths\u2019 option on a block of stock,\u201d Hopkins wrote. The friend agreed.
\nIt would be the wisest financial decision of Hopkins\u2019s life.
\nWithin five years of that partnership, Hopkins turned Pepsodent
\ninto one of the best-known products on earth and, in the process,
\nhelped create a toothbrushing habit that moved across America with
\nstartling speed. Soon, everyone from Shirley Temple to Clark Gable
\nwas bragging about their \u201cPepsodent smile.\u201d By 1930, Pepsodent was
\nsold in China, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and almost anywhere
\nelse Hopkins could buy ads. A decade after the first Pepsodent
\ncampaign, pollsters found that toothbrushing had become a ritual for
\nmore than half the American population. Hopkins had helped
\nestablish toothbrushing as a daily activity.
\nThe secret to his success, Hopkins would later boast, was that he
\nhad found a certain kind of cue and reward that fueled a particular
\nhabit. It\u2019s an alchemy so powerful that even today the basic principles
\nare still used by video game designers, food companies, hospitals, and
\nmillions of salesmen around the world. Eugene Pauly taught us about
\nthe habit loop, but it was Claude Hopkins that showed how new habits
\ncan be cultivated and grown.
\nSo what, exactly, did Hopkins do?
\nHe created a craving. And that craving, it turns out, is what makes
\ncues and rewards work. That craving is what powers the habit loop.<\/p>\n
Throughout his career, one of Claude Hopkins\u2019s signature tactics was
\nto find simple triggers to convince consumers to use his products every
\nday. He sold Quaker Oats, for instance, as a breakfast cereal that could
\nprovide energy for twenty-four hours\u2014but only if you ate a bowl every
\nmorning. He hawked tonics that cured stomachaches, joint pain, bad
\nskin, and \u201cwomanly problems\u201d\u2014but only if you drank the medicine at
\nsymptoms\u2019 first appearance. Soon, people were devouring oatmeal at
\ndaybreak and chugging from little brown bottles whenever they felt a
\nhint of fatigue, which, as luck would have it, often happened at least
\nonce a day.
\nTo sell Pepsodent, then, Hopkins needed a trigger that would justify
\nthe toothpaste\u2019s daily use. He sat down with a pile of dental textbooks.
\n\u201cIt was dry reading,\u201d he later wrote. \u201cBut in the middle of one book I
\nfound a reference to the mucin plaques on teeth, which I afterward
\ncalled \u2018the film.\u2019 That gave me an appealing idea. I resolved to
\nadvertise this toothpaste as a creator of beauty. To deal with that
\ncloudy film.\u201d
\nIn focusing on tooth film, Hopkins was ignoring the fact that this
\nsame film has always covered people\u2019s teeth and hadn\u2019t seemed to
\nbother anyone. The film is a naturally occurring membrane that builds
\nup on teeth regardless of what you eat or how often you brush. People
\nhad never paid much attention to it, and there was little reason why
\nthey should: You can get rid of the film by eating an apple, running
\nyour finger over your teeth, brushing, or vigorously swirling liquid
\naround your mouth. Toothpaste didn\u2019t do anything to help remove the
\nfilm. In fact, one of the leading dental researchers of the time said that
\nall toothpastes\u2014particularly Pepsodent\u2014were worthless.
\nThat didn\u2019t stop Hopkins from exploiting his discovery. Here, he
\ndecided, was a cue that could trigger a habit. Soon, cities were
\nplastered with Pepsodent ads.
\n\u201cJust run your tongue across your teeth,\u201d read one. \u201cYou\u2019ll feel a film
\n\u2014that\u2019s what makes your teeth look \u2018off color\u2019 and invites decay.\u201d
\n\u201cNote how many pretty teeth are seen everywhere,\u201d read another ad,
\nfeaturing smiling beauties. \u201cMillions are using a new method of teeth
\ncleansing. Why would any woman have dingy film on her teeth?
\nPepsodent removes the film!\u201d
\nThe brilliance of these appeals was that they relied upon a cue\u2014
\ntooth film\u2014that was universal and impossible to ignore. Telling
\nsomeone to run their tongue across their teeth, it turned out, was
\nlikely to cause them to run their tongue across their teeth. And when
\nthey did, they were likely to feel a film. Hopkins had found a cue that
\nwas simple, had existed for ages, and was so easy to trigger that an
\nadvertisement could cause people to comply automatically.
\nMoreover, the reward, as Hopkins envisioned it, was even more
\nenticing. Who, after all, doesn\u2019t want to be more beautiful? Who
\ndoesn\u2019t want a prettier smile? Particularly when all it takes is a quick
\nbrush with Pepsodent?<\/p>\n
After the campaign launched, a quiet week passed. Then two. In the
\nthird week, demand exploded. There were so many orders for
\nPepsodent that the company couldn\u2019t keep up. In three years, the
\nproduct went international, and Hopkins was crafting ads in Spanish,
\nGerman, and Chinese. Within a decade, Pepsodent was one of the topselling goods in the world, and remained America\u2019s best-selling
\ntoothpaste for more than thirty years.
\nBefore Pepsodent appeared, only 7 percent of Americans had a tube
\nof toothpaste in their medicine chests. A decade after Hopkins\u2019s ad
\ncampaign went nationwide, that number had jumped to 65 percent. By
\nthe end of World War II, the military downgraded concerns about
\nrecruits\u2019 teeth because so many soldiers were brushing every day.
\n\u201cI made for myself a million dollars on Pepsodent,\u201d Hopkins wrote a
\nfew years after the product appeared on shelves. The key, he said, was
\nthat he had \u201clearned the right human psychology.\u201d That psychology
\nwas grounded in two basic rules:
\nFirst, find a simple and obvious cue.
\nSecond, clearly define the rewards.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
THE POWER OF HABIT<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n CHARLES DUHIGG<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One day in the early 1900s, a prominent American executive named Claude C. Hopkins was approached by an old friend with a new business idea. The friend had discovered an amazing product, he explained, that he was convinced would be a hit. 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