😉 The “Hopkins Loophole” - The marketing hack that changed the entire world.

Quick question for you,

“Why do you use toothpaste?”

You might be rolling your eyes and thinking:

“I use toothpaste so my breath doesn’t smell like a garbage dump.”

But as you’ll learn in a moment, that’s not the REAL reason people use toothpaste.

In fact…

You have marketing genius Claude Hopkins to thank for your shining teeth and minty breath. 

Let’s travel back to a much smellier time in the past.

Believe it or not, in the early 20th century, almost no one brushed their teeth or used toothpaste. 

Door-to-door salesmen went broke trying to sell it. Not even dentists recommended it to their patients. 

To finally end this era of rotten teeth and bad breath, Pepsodent toothpaste approached legendary ad-man Claude Hopkins.

Prior to hiring Hopkins, Pepsodent tried to get people to use toothpaste by marketing it as a health product.

This mainly consisted of presenting boring scientific facts about why toothpaste is good for your teeth. 

Yawn 🥱🥱🥱

Hopkins knew if there was any hope of ridding the world of stinky breath, he needed to change how people thought about toothpaste.

So here’s what he did…

Instead of presenting toothpaste as a health product, he marketed it as a beauty product.

This meant changing the focus from “boring science facts” to exciting benefits like “fresh breath” and “clean teeth”:

It also helped that, at the time, Pepsodent was the only company with peppermint as one of its ingredients.

So customers not only enjoyed the benefit of shiny teeth, but also of the minty reward Pepsodent gave after brushing. 

What Hopkins did is a classic example of the framing effect.

He took the same product, toothpaste, but changed how people looked at it.

Through the wave of a magical marketing wand a bland-o healthy product, turned into an essential beauty product.  

Flash forward a few years, and Pepsodent is the biggest toothpaste brand in the world.

And now, every American has a tube of toothpaste on their bathroom sink. 

That’s the magic of marketing loopholes in action! 

Same product. Different frame. 

Happy Marketing,

Evelio

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