Michigan, probably pretty clean at time, wasn’t clean enough for
Schlitz. The final beer product was aged for six months before
being bottled and shipped.
Next, Hopkins went to the Schlitz laboratory where he saw the
original mother yeast cell. It took 1,200 separate experiments to
get that one cell—all so Schlitz would have the most robust flavor.
All the yeast used in making Schlitz beer has come from that one
mother cell. Hopkins also learned that a Schlitz family member
selects the choicest barley and the brewmeister travels to the old
country to gather the best hops.
Turning intelligence into dollars
With all that gathered intelligence, what does Hopkins do? He
sits down and crafts a print ad campaign. He talks about purity,
but he doesn’t scream it. Instead he weaves it into stories that
balance the 50 years of Schlitz brewing experience that have
brought about perfection with these new brewing methods that
produce the purest beer ever.
Was gathering intelligence in order to sell beer a lot of work? As
Hopkins says, “The uninformed would be staggered to know the
amount of work involved in a single ad. Weeks of work sometimes.
The ad seems so simple, and it must be simple to appeal to
simple people. But behind that ad lie reams of data, volumes of
information and months of research. This is no lazy man’s field.”
Did all that work pay off for Schlitz? Within a few months, Schlitz
jumped from the No. 5 brewery in the country to No. 1 and held on
to that position for many years to come.
Did all that work pay off for Hopkins? We don’t know what his
salary at the J. L. Stack Advertising Agency was, but he soon
moved on to the prestigious Lord & Thomas Agency in Chicago,
where its legendary boss, Albert Lasker, paid Claude Hopkins
an annual salary of $185,000 to start. That was in 1907. The
equivalent today would be around $4.6 million. And by the time
Hopkins retired in 1923 he had been both the company’s president
and chairman. Good intelligence gathering and hard work paid off
handsomely.
If you’d like to learn how to gather intelligence the right way and
you’re willing to put in some hard work, I can show you the way to
making seven figures too. See my note at the end.
ABOUT JORDAN BELFORT
In the 1990s, JORDAN BELFORT built one of the most dynamic
and successful sales organizations in Wall Street history.
During that time, he soared to the highest financial heights,
earning over $50 million a year, a feat that coined him the name
“The Wolf of Wall Street.”
As the owner of Stratton Oakmont, Belfort employed over
1,000 stockbrokers and raised over $1.5 billion and started
more than 30 million-dollar-companies from scratch.
He’s acted as a consultant to more than 50 public companies
and has been written about in virtually every major newspaper
and magazine in the world, including The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The London Times,
The Herald Tribune, Le Monde, Corriere della Serra, Forbes,
Business Week, Paris Match and Rolling Stone.
Some final thoughts
What the Schlitz Brewing Company did was nothing
extraordinary. Every brewery produced beer in the exact same
way. All Claude Hopkins did was tell people why Schlitz beer was
pure. In so doing he gave them the reason why they should choose
Schlitz over other beers.
Many believe Claude Hopkins is the father of modern advertising.
He introduced us to the free sample, coupons, premiums, split
testing and mail order.
I never met Claude Hopkins. Totally different generation. But
I’ve trained thousands of men and women like him. People who
weren’t satisfied with an average lifestyle and who were willing to
roll up their sleeves and learn how to be the best closers in their
industry.
Today, his proprietary Straight Line System allows him to take
virtually any company or individual, regardless of age, race, sex,
educational background or social status, and empower them
to create massive wealth, abundance, and entrepreneurial
success, without sacrificing integrity or ethics.
Jordan’s two international bestselling memoirs, The Wolf of
Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, have been
published in over 40 countries and translated into 18 languages.
His life story has been turned in to a major motion picture
starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese.
jordanbelfort.com
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