Early advertising borrowed the Bible’s structure for promising cures to the despairing

Evidence

The power of promising cure, let alone eternal life, would have been only too familiar to Claude Hopkins, the former preacher. His copy for Dr. Shoop’s, now over a century old, is worth reading carefully, as it follows a still familiar formula of anticipating doubts and the likelihood that the sufferer may have been let down many times before. One might even detect the influence of Matthew’s Gospel, specifically the story of “a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse” (9:25-26). Hopkins may have had the parable in mind when he wrote Some sick one may say:-“But I’ve tried about all medicines, consulted many physicians, and spent a great deal of money. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Wu’s broader thesis on persuasion techniques; echoes rhetorical analysis of the Hopkins formula. — connects to: Market forces flattened evangelical theological distinctives into a generic consumer identity — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 73; Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213; Desperate conditions make people receptive to faith-based remedies they might otherwise reject — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 127 (+3 more)
• SEED: Angle: tracing the gospel-parable structure of modern direct-response advertising copy.

Broader Connections

• Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213
• Desperate conditions make people receptive to faith-based remedies they might otherwise reject #corroborates (0.78) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 127
• Market forces flattened evangelical theological distinctives into a generic consumer identity #corroborates (0.75) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 73
• Early advertising converted human attention into cash by creating demand #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 76
• Belief in advertising’s power grew from salient successes despite weak proof #corroborates (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 488
• Early twentieth-century advertising moved from persuasion to brand loyalty and conversion #expands (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 204