Bruce Barton is known as an advertising genius and marketing wizard, but finding information on him is not easy.  Only one book has ever been written about him, The Seven Lost Secrets by Joe Vitale, and it is out of print.  Bruce Barton was a co-founder of the BBDO Advertising Agency.  In 1925, Bruce Barton created an advertising letter that achieved a 100% response from customers.  Bruce also wrote a book about advertising and business marketing and, after it was published, the ad agency received an incredible amount of new business from customers who wanted to hire Bruce to do their advertising.  The lesson to be learned from that is that writing a bestseller will do more to improve your reputation as a marketer than any amount of testimonials or self-promotion.

Bruce Barton believed that good advertising copy had to be brief, simple, and sincere.  He stated that brief messages will be remembered longer than verbose ones, but the information must be complete; all important things in life are simple and direct, such as love, family, children, self-respect; and the public can detect insincerity and we must believe before we can expect the public to believe.  He also said the copywriter must “…go straight to the reader’s selfish interest.”

The next time you write advertising, consider Barton's advice.  It helped him write copy that is still talked about today!