Branding

“ When a happy word or phrase or symbol is let loose in the advertising world, it is caught up, and [Pg 151] repeated, and chanted, and echoed, until the sound and sight of it become a torture. How long ago is it since every merchantable product of man's ingenuity from automobiles to xylophones was being dedicated to "his majesty the American citizen"? How long is it since every item in the magazine pages was something ending in ly, "supremely" good, or "potently" attractive, or "permanently" satisfying, or in any other conceivable phrase, adverbially so? ”

“ The 'owner' symbolizes here that 'section' of consciousness, or pulse of thought, which we have all along represented as the vehicle of the judgment of identity; and the 'brand' symbolizes the characters of warmth and continuity, by reason of which the judgment is made. There is found a self-brand, just as there is found a herd-brand. Each brand, so far, is the mark, or cause of our knowing, that certain things belong-together. ”

“ Roope.
[Joining Philip.] Oh, my dear Phil, I entreat you, feed the papers! It isn't as if you hadn't talent; you have. Advertising minus talent goes a long way; advertising plus talent is irresistible. Feed the papers. The more you do for them, the more they'll do for you. Quid pro quo. To the advertiser shall advertisement be given. Newspaper men are the nicest chaps in the world. ”

“ Ribstone, to feel towards our organization.
It is not our desire to merely build a number of advertisements which may be combined together in a more or less connected series by some such device as art treatment. Art is all very well as a hand-maiden of advertising, but for a monumental campaign you need the inspiration of a Big Idea, a genuinely dominating thought that will clarionize every piece of copy and tie the whole together in a culminating increment of public consciousness.
Advertising is either Product-Advertising or Institutional-Advertising. ”

“ The omission of a letter, or the addition of a letter, may each effectually do its work in keeping out of sight the true character and origin of a word. Thus the omission of a letter. When the first syllable of ‘bran-new’ was spelt ‘brand’ with a final ‘d’, ‘brand-new’, how vigorous an image did the word contain. The ‘brand’ is the [232] fire, and ‘brand-new’ equivalent to ‘fire-new’ (Shakespeare) , is that which is fresh and bright, as being newly come from the forge and fire. As now spelt, ‘bran-new’ conveys to us no image at all. ”

“ Subject to the preceding qualifications a trade-mark may consist of a name, symbol, figure, letter, form, or device, if adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant in order to designate the goods he manufactures or sells, or to distinguish the same from those manufactured or sold by another, to the end that the goods may be known in the market as his, and to enable him to secure such profits as result from his reputation for skill, industry, and fidelity. ”

“ As a natural result of industrial growth came standardization. As anyone will understand, the man who owns a factory for the making of women’s dresses, chewing gum, cigars, automobiles, men’s hats, must, if his factory is to grow to the huge output he desires, create in the public mind a widespread{13} demand for one kind of cigar, one kind of hat, one style of dress, one make of automobile.
Advertising as a force in our American life began to grow and here it is that the present day American writer came into flower. ”

“ In these days when everyone keeps his trademark before the public, as you call it, not to advertise is the most original and startling thing one can do to attract attention. It was the fact that I do not advertise that drew you here. And everyone who comes here thinks he has discovered the place himself. ”

“ This combination of the two greatest forces in advertising has been found to succeed beyond any other method.
To make a display of goods in your window that is most attractive, that will sell readily the articles exhibited, is to-day acknowledged an art.
Many things are to be considered. There are the technicalities to be learned, judgment and good taste to be exercised, color harmony to be secured; and, above all, there must be positive knowledge as to what constitutes an attractive exhibit, and what will arouse in the observer cupidity and a longing to possess the goods you offer for sale. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The record demonstrates a recognition in the industry that a successful sales program relies to a large extent on consumer recognition and preference for particular brands, and that this preference must be built up through intensive advertising and other promotional techniques. ”

“ Those superior persons—the average business men—who are continually parading their great commercial acumen before the humbler folks who only rank as customers, seem to be singularly short-sighted in regard to the aid which literature can, and does, lend to business. They support but one form of literature, if it can be dignified with the name, Advertising, and in this respect they are to be commended as faithful patrons of the art of printing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Did you ever lay brands together on a hearth, brands with little life in them too, seemingly; when with no breath blown or stirring of air to fan them, gradually, by mere action and reaction upon each other, the cold grey ends began to sparkle and glow, till by and by the fire burst forth and flame sprang up? ”

“ The enormous marketing efforts associated with a new brand of cereal, software, a political campaign, a role in a movie, or a sports event result in advertisement's becoming a language in itself, with its own vocabulary and grammar. ”

“ A brand book is published by the Live Stock Association and every member of the association is furnished with a book. By this method, whenever a stray animal is found, by referring to the brand book the owner can be informed of the whereabouts of his animal. ”

“ So you see, our University of Jabbergrab has discovered advertising to be a “profession”; it takes its place alongside chiropody, palmistry and fox-trotting. If you want to know what these new “professors” are doing to American journalism, I invite you to read Chapters XLIII-XLVII of “The Brass Check”; I invite you to study the samples of advertising there quoted—one of which occupied a full page in all the most popular and respectable American magazines—and then come back to Chancellor Brown’s pamphlet and read his statement: “Many advertising men, I am told, were formerly teachers. ”

“ Advertisements that so frequently invade the public Ear, and which seem but too often calculated to deceive.
As to the Proprietors themselves, some of them are well known in the City, and others are not totally Strangers in the polite Circle; which puts it still more in their Power to promote the Design, and that not more upon the Principles of Love and Honour, than those of Sense and Discretion. ”

“ Advertising has, of course, within the last fifty years, developed entirely new courses, and has become an institution differing much from the arrangement in which, so far as our references show, it first appeared in this country; its growth has been attended by an almost entire revulsion of mode, and where we now get long or short announcements by the hundred, dictated by a spirit of business, our fathers received statements couched in a style of pure romance, which fully compensated for their comparatively meagre proportions. ”

“ While the entire advertisement is easily read, especially in its larger form, and probably has the approval of those who insist on legibility in advertising composition, there is yet something about it that will also interest those who maintain that typography should be built on art principles. The border, trademark and name of the article advertised blend in tone, while the remaining type matter shows a pleasing gray. Inserting the trademark in the space left by the shorter words of the heading makes the effect unusual. ”

“ For example, in an advertising newspaper, the simple figure of a house, or of a ship, or of a locomotive engine, at the head of an advertisement, is a sort of hieroglyphic, which says much more plainly and distinctly, and in much shorter time, than any combination of letters could do, that what follows it is an advertisement relating to a house, or a vessel, or a railroad. ”

“ When an article was wanted, it generally had to be hunted for, unless it chanced to fall under the immediate range of vision of salesman or customer, while the crowded shelves and counters presented a bewildering array of tinware, glassware, patent medicines, clocks, trimmed hats, churns, gaudy neckwear, cheap clothing, mock jewelry, hair-oils and colored perfumes put up in glass bottles of seductive shapes, along with sundry articles great and small necessary to the needs and adornment of the people of the surrounding country. ”

“ So that's why I say, Abe, that advertised art comes under the head of merchandise, and I ain't so sure that the artist who advertises ain't just as much of a business man as we would say, for example, a fish-dealer. ”

“ In the sweet uses of advertisement the American is surely an expert, and it would have been curious indeed, if he had overlooked so obvious and so effective a method of advertising as the pictorial poster. ”

“ The manufacturer of any product well knows that constant repetition and the dangling of his product before the eyes of the public will lead to a widespread acceptance of the advertising slogans propounded for his article. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is also generally an entire want of organisation, each new manufacturer being absolutely at liberty to adopt any brand or mark that he may think fit to adopt; and though, in most cases, respect is paid to old-established marks, plenty of examples of repetition and overlapping exist. ”

“ It sometimes happens that an advertising character is a figure or a device that has been formally adopted as a trade-mark of the advertiser's product. The National Lead Company's Dutch painter boy is a device of this kind. While a trade-mark must not be changed, a human figure, used as the trade-mark, may be put into another illustration, and used separately. ”

“ Considerable business can be done by letter writing to stores, restaurants and boarding-houses in distant cities. It may be impossible for you to go personally, in which case letters often bring the desired results. Make your letters business-like and typewrite them. Do not be discouraged if you do not get many replies at first as there are at least fifty per cent who pay no attention to such letters. But this form of advertising usually pays. ”

“ All the packings, covers, labels, trademarks, and names by which the manufacturer tries to stimulate the attention, the imagination, and the suggestibility of the customer may easily draw a large part of their psychological effectiveness from without, as soon as they imitate the appearance of articles which are well introduced and favored in the market. If the public is familiar with and favorably inclined toward an article on account of its inner values or on account of its being much advertised, a similar name or a similar packing may offer efficient help to a rival article. ”

“ Advertising, with its billboard message of rustless screens and co-educational turkish-baths, has done much to further the good cause, and a glance through the files of newspapers of seventy-five years ago, when the big news story of the day was played up in diamond type easily deciphered in a strong light with the naked eye, shows that [pg 125] news printing has not, to use a slang phrase, stood still. ”

“ We are here dealing not with a commodity alone, but with a commodity plus the brand or trade-mark which it bears as evidence of its origin and of the quality of the commodity for which the brand or trade-mark stands. ”

“ Every town assigned a particular brand for its horse kind, each one of which was to be marked on the left shoulder by a regularly appointed brander, who should record a description of every horse branded. ”

“ The customer who has the choice among various makes and brands in the store may not have any idea how far one is superior to another, but the mere fact that one among them bears a name which has repeatedly approached his consciousness before through advertisements is sufficient to arouse a certain warm feeling of acquaintance, and by a transposition of feeling this pleasurable tone accentuates the attractiveness of that make and leads to its selection. ”

“ It will be read with interest to the end.—Oregonian.
"The Brand" is splendidly written and is better than "The Virginian."—Kalispell Bee.
"The Brand" is good, refreshing and wholesome. It takes me back to God's country.—B. E. Wiley, M.D., London, Eng.
The Indian Agent who "hates Injuns," and the Scotch Blackfoot hero are new in fiction but not in the West. Every review has been good. ”

“ As a natural result of the demand for standardization of taste and material desires came the modern magazine. The magazine with a circulation of a million or two million became not unusual. The real purpose, as everyone understands, was to create through advertising, a nation-wide demand for certain commodities. The magazines were business institutions run by business men with business ends in view. ”