Advertising

“ But our selection of goods presented directly to us through the choice of advertising brings us a greater percentage of best products.
Now the manufacturer is using the direct primaries of advertising. It remains for the people to take the final step—to use this advertising in order to make the most intelligent and advantageous selection for themselves.
Advertised products are the field for the consumer's selection, because they present their merits and are willing to stand on them. Determining the qualities he wants, the consumer buys the products; the dealer supplies them. ”

“ I do not count the people who read and answer the advertisements; I count only those who write them and sell them, those who set the type and manufacture the paper, those who distribute the publications and keep the accounts of the complicated operations. There cannot be less than a million people thus occupied with the advertising business in America ”

“ A French writer says that “The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an ordinary advertisement; the second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion, he looks at the price; the fifth insertion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion, he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion, he purchases.” Your object in advertising is to make the public understand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep advertising, until you have imparted that information, all the money you have spent is lost. ”

“ And the consumer, selecting the product he wants out of the many that are put before him through advertising, can establish it even against the preference of the house that supplies it. The pure foods, the superior clothing, the stronger shoes, and the better grades in a hundred lines have been presented to the consumer and maintained through the advertising appeal to the people direct. I do not mean that all superior products have been or must be so introduced—that no unadvertised goods have quality; any more than that no good leaders have come up in politics under the old methods. ”

“ My experiences had taught me the advantages of advertising. I printed whole columns in the papers, setting forth the wonders of my establishment. Old “fogies” opened their eyes in amazement at a man who could expend hundreds of dollars in announcing a show of “stuffed monkey skins”; but these same old fogies paid their quarters, nevertheless, and when they saw the curiosities and novelties in the Museum halls, they, like all other visitors, were astonished as well as pleased, and went home and told their friends and neighbors and thus assisted in advertising my business. ”

“ MIFFLIN—I'd like to get you fellows' ideas about advertising. There was a young chap in here the other day from an advertising agency, trying to get me to put some copy in the papers. Have you found that it pays?
FRUEHLING—It always pays—somebody. The only question is, does it pay the man who pays for the ad?
MEREDITH—What do you mean?
FRUEHLING—Did you ever consider the problem of what I call tangential advertising? By that I mean advertising that benefits your rival rather than yourself? Take an example. On Sixth Avenue there is a lovely delicatessen shop, but rather expensive. ”

“ Frequent advertising is, upon the whole, a mark rather of a want of business, than of that kind of respectability which consists in the enjoyment of a concern already in full operation and productiveness ”

“ Thus you see advertising has made possible the great complex papers and magazines of the day with their corps of trained editors, reporters, and advertising writers, in numbers and intellectual calibre comparable with the faculty of a good-sized university. Advertising makes it possible to issue a paper far below the cost of manufacturing—all to the benefit of the consumer. So far as I know there is not an important daily, weekly, or monthly in America that can be manufactured at the selling price. ”

“ And to help themselves, they helped it, till today the larger and the happily most rapidly and steadily increasing bulk of advertising is becoming recognized to be sound and beneficial. For the real, essential nature of advertising action, when given a true test, has had to come out. Essentially advertising is the twentieth century link which restores not only the physical proximity but the moral identity and responsibility of the manufacturer to the consumer. ”

“ Another observation I have made is, that extensive advertising is likely to result in a desire for the exaggeration of facts—at all events, so far as the individual advertisers themselves are concerned. That any firm, tradesmen, manufacturers, agents, quacks, perfumers, patentees, or whatever they may be, pay a settled annual sum, no more and no less, for advertising, I do not believe now, whatever I may have done before commencing my inquiries.
I have endeavoured as much as possible, and wherever practicable, to make the advertisements tell their own story. ”

“ Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land,—it largely increases the product. Thousands of persons may be reading your advertisement while you are eating, or sleeping, or attending to your business ”

“ Any article, device or machine can be sold directly to the people through the medium of cleverly displayed [173] advertisements placed in the right publications. When you get ready for an advertising campaign write to any advertising agent—and he also advertises—telling him what it is you have to sell and he will send you a list of the periodicals which will reach the class of folks who will be interested in your commodity and also quote you advertising rates. ”

“ I got my customers by newspaper advertising—almost exclusively. It is a comforting belief that one satisfied customer will get you another, and that that customer will get you another, and so on, but it has not so worked out in my experience. Out of all my customers less than twelve have become customers through the influence of friends.
My experience has taught me another thing: That direct advertising does not pay. By direct advertising I mean the mailing of letters and circulars to a list of names in the hope of selling something to persons whose names are on that list. ”

“ If sales are made by mail, the salesman supplements his salesmanship with catalogs, booklets, circulars, letters—all as surely advertising as salesmanship; in the store, he displays his goods attractively, which is a most effective form of advertising. And so, in the battle for business, victories are won by supplementing advertising with salesmanship, and salesmanship with advertising—combining the two for results. ”

“ For when advertisers spend millions to change people's habits, raise their standards and create in them a sentiment for new and better things, the only part of that advertising which pays the advertiser is the part which makes the people adopt the brand or make of the article specifically advertised, not a copy or an imitation of it. ”

“ There is a general impression that advertising indirectly subsidizes and supports most of our magazines and newspapers; and with that goes a hazy idea that advertising is also profitable to most of the advertisers ”

“ The wide-awake business man of America began to employ the best writers, to write his ads. These writers dealt with facts, gentleman, facts, in their own inimical style, if I may say so, and the advertising sections of our great American magazines shortly rivaled in interest the stories and other fictional matter, so that it was the common custom of our business men to tear out the advertising section and keep that to read and throw the rest away. ”

“ Someone has said, "The time to advertise is all the time," and among modern business organizations none more thoroughly recognize and strictly adhere to this statement than Department Stores. Nowhere else is the science, the art, of advertising more intelligently understood, appreciated and applied. Advertising is recognized as the pulse of the business, the great vitalizing force. The importance of the relation of advertising to business cannot possibly be exaggerated, and for this reason it is considered most seriously. ”

“ This is business—the plain economic and social necessity of the advertising business.
The advertisers of soap and collars keep after us for cleanliness and neatness; the advertisers of filters have perforce to make us hold higher regard for our health; and the advertisers of plumbing requisites, our sanitation. The advertisers of such advanced things as automobiles and pianos are after us, much more continually and effectively than the sociologists, to raise our standards of living and to cause us to make the greater effort toward personal efficiency. ”

“ I want to tell you that advertising pays. Five thousand dollars, and it didn't take you more than six months to write the thing. Those fellows don't know whether it's good or not. All they know is that the newspapers have given your other story a send-off. Talk about newspapers; the first thing you know we'll have money enough to paper the town. But this is all yours. No matter, I'm as much interested as if it were mine. Say, let me have this check a minute. ”

“ Should you have a product that you intend to give wide publicity to, whether it is your intention to sell to the consumer direct or to sell to him through the retail trade, it is a good plan to engage the services of an advertising firm to conduct the campaign for you. ”

“ Back of Department Store success, are earnestness, persistence, concentration, energy; but between these and achievement stands advertising. "As the business grows and is prosperous, it is due to the controlling factors of system, merchandise and advertising, but advertising is the dynamic force which vitalizes all the rest." ”

“ We just quote this to show how advertising stirs the mighty deep and wakes people up. We would make propositions to our brethren of the press by which they could make some money out of the ad, too, instead of telling them to put it in the middle of the telegraph page, surrounded by pure reading matter, daily and weekly till forbid and pay when we get ready. ”

“ The question whether advertising pays will never be known in the individual case, for, like marriage, you can't tell till you try it. But in the aggregate, also like marriage, there is no doubt of its value. The tremendous power of persistent advertising to carry an idea of almost any kind into the minds of the people and stamp it there, is amazing. ”

“ The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection, that it is not easy to propose any improvement. ”

“ We all know that the advertising of these houses has enormously increased their distribution, so that the manufacturers can count upon a steady consumption and can manufacture with all the economies of a steady and tremendous trade. Yet because we have everywhere ocular evidence of the immense sums these houses pay in advertising, we still assume—most of us—that with every pair of shoes and every article of clothing, we are paying besides an advertising bill. ”

“ But this circumstance, instead of discovering a cause for the industrial efficiency of advertising, only shows greater inherent strength in the other twentieth century circumstances which demand and make necessary and effective the great bulk of our modern advertising. ”

“ All this time advertising was a growing art, and advertisements were beginning to make themselves manifest as the main support and chief source of profit of newspapers, as well as the most natural channel of communication between the buyers and sellers, the needing and supplying members of a vast community. ”

“ Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as the great new force. “It really does the thing, you know.” ”

“ The advertising matter published in the newspapers is largely of local character, while that published in our high class monthly magazines and weeklies, in trade journals, etc., is largely general in character. The advertisements published by the former are chiefly those of local merchants and manufacturers and of local, commercial, financial and other interests. On the other hand the advertisements carried by the class of monthly and weekly periodicals indicated represent persons, companies and interests widely scattered throughout the country. ”

“ Don’t think that your obligation is fulfilled when the paper is placed. Try to work with the advertiser and encourage him to greater use of your medium by giving him information as to local conditions regarding the sale of his product, post the local dealers who would naturally be interested just when a certain product is being advertised, and endeavor to secure their co-operation in the way of window displays, etc., to connect the advertising with their stores. ”

“ And although the great and increasing sales of all proper, advertised articles proves in the most conclusive way that the people regard the advertised articles as, on the whole, purer and better than the unadvertised brands, yet the belief still clings firmly that in buying an advertised article, the buyer must "pay" for advertising. ”

“ An advertisement must first of all demand and win attention. The first word, the first sentence, must be strong enough to arrest the eye of the average reader, who runs hastily through the advertising matter of a magazine, newspaper, or other medium. It must catch the reader’s interest, and hold his attention long enough to lead him into the remainder of the argument. ”

“ INTRODUCTORY—NEWSPAPERS AND NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING. It must be patent to every one who takes the least interest in the subject, that the study of so important a branch of our present system of commerce as advertising, with its rise and growth, cannot fail to be full of interest. Indeed it is highly suggestive of amusement, as a reference to any of our old newspapers, full as they are of quaint announcements, untrammelled by the squeamishness of the present age, will show. ”