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EDITORIAL PAGE
Ad vertising—Light of Business and Economy
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cago, showed his under
standing of the important event, interesting
himself in the laying of the corner stone and
in all of the proceedings, and from all over
the United States men earnest and able in the
work of promoting business and multiplying
possibilities accepted the invitation to attend,
ft ft ft
Not alone business men, merchants, adver
tising men or editors are interested in adver
tising.
The whole country, every citizen, every
woman, every child, derives benefit from the
advertising art, which has been developed
within the present generation.
Every schoolboy knows how the human
race has begun its mental development since
language was discovered. Before men could
speak they could not tell each other their ideas
or help each other.
What language is to the human race, AD
VERTISING IS TO BUSINESS, INDUS
TRY, COMMERCE, MANUFACTURING
AND ECONOMY.
Advertising is the language of trade, the
language if energy, the language of prosperity,
the language of the man of to-day determined
to do in his life what in former years cduld not
be done in fewer than half a dozen generations.
Advertising, as the word indicates, is GIV
ING INFORMATION.
Literally translated, the word means, "to
turn to,” from the Latin of ad —to-rand verto
—turn.
The advertisements turns the public to the
thing wanted.
Advertising, the voice of commerce, tells
the work that the thinkers, fighters and inven
tors of industry are doing.
ft ft ft
Very old, indeed, is advertising. The rain
bow in the clouds, according to the Scriptures,
was one of the early advertisements. It prom
ised that men should not be destroyed with a
flood again. In that advertisement, brilliant
in color, magnificent in size, supreme power
announced the fact that that particular flood
was to be the last flood.
Caesar used the advertisement when, fight
ing the patricians and using the bulk of the
people against his enemies in the Senate, he
caused the proceedings of the Senate to be ad •
vertised or the walls of Rome. That was the
first semi modern advertising.
The object of men that create is to make
their creations known.
And the task that advertising accomplishes,
and that nothing else CAN accomplish, is to
make known to all the efforts, the results, the
inducements of the individual.
Many and ingenious have been the advertis
ing methods of men since the beginning.
It w ,s Solomon’s advertising of his wisdom
—in various very respectable ways that
brought the Queen of Sheba to see him.
It was iidvertising, undoubtedly, when
young Cleopatra, hoping to get the Roman
power behind her weak kingdom, had herself
wrapped up in a rug and, thus wrapped up, de
livered in Caesar’s private apartment. She
was disappointed, in the result of that adver
tisement. for, although she became the mother
of Little Cesarion, Caesar’s son, she was not
■ile to influence or control him. And when she
, took Antony as second best, she failed and
died.
k It was good advertising when Canonicus,
&ST aay
set in Chicago for laying
the corner stone of the
first great building de
voted exclusively to the
SCIENCE AND LITER
ATURE of advertising.
Mayor Harrison, of Chi-
The Atlanta Georgian
Have You Thought What Advertising Means to the Life of
America ? Do You Understand that it is a Guarantee of
Quality, and the Agent of Economy? Do You Realize that
if You Are to Succeed in Any Business or Any Profession,
ADVERTISING WILL HELP YOU? Advertising is the
LANGUAGE ot Business. It is the Bright Light by Which
Commerce and Industry Find their Way Throughout the Nation
the Indian chief, intending to frighten the lit
tle group of New Englanders, filled a snake
skin with arrows and sent it to Governor Brad
ford. And it was still better advertising when
that same Governor filled the snake skin with
powder and bullets and sent it back to Canoni
cus. This Indian gentlemen looked at
white man’s advertisement in the snake skin''
thoughtfully and decided to put off the fight
indefinitely.
A ft ft
It was excellent advertising of her courage,
and of woman’s power to fight, when Hannah
Dustin, of Haverhill, Mass., being captured by
the Indians who murdered her baby, and being
led away to be tortured, returned on foot bring
ing with her the scalps of ten Indians that she
had killed in their sleep.
It was good advertising, although not meant
as such, when Agassiz, the great naturalist,
said, "I have not time to make money.”
It was good advertising when Marc An
tony pointed out the holes that the daggers
made in Caesar’s clothing —and even better
advertising when he mentioned with pretended
reluctance how much of his money and prop
erty Caesar had left to the howling mob.
AAA
The history of the world has been a history
of advertising, conscious or unconscious.
This generation of ours is the first that sees
advertising as a science and an art.
And even this generation does not realize
the importance of advertising, the dignity of
the advertising profession, the extraordinary
part that advertising is destined to play in the
industry, the commerce, and especially in the
economy of the country.
The advertisement is to the industry and
business of the nation what the bright electric
light is to the big engine producing the power.
The little electric bulb tells what the engine is
doing. The brilliantly worded advertisement
tells what industry, commerce, manufacturers
are doing.
In the olden days everything was slow. A
man with great difficulty managed to place his
little store on a street where many passed. The
people only could know what he was doing if
they PASSED HIS store.
Now a man puts his factory in a distant
town, nobody has seen it, nobody knows per
haps where it is. But that man puts his name,
his purposes, his accomplishments, IN THE
HANDS OF TENS OF MILLIONS OF HU
MAN BEINGS. He does not wait for the man
to pass his door. He goes through the door of
the house in which the man lives, and in this
monthly, or that weekly, or in many dailies,
presents to the man the story that he has to
tell. -
Therein lies the power of advertising. You
can work to-day and to-morrow you can
tell the whole world what you have done.
You can have a new idea this week, and
next year that idea can be in the minds of fifty
millions of human beings.
You are not bound by your location, limited
by the strength of your voice. Your voice is
the voice of the printing press.
No man need waste a day if he has the right
SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 23. 1912.
idea and the energy, and knows how to talk
for publication.
ft ft ft
It is important that the public know what
advertising means.
Especially important is the fact that plenty
of advertising almost invariably means AN
EXCELLENT AND HONEST PRODUCT.
If you read that a man had invested a mil
lion dollars in a factory of brick, stone and iron,
you would not need to be told that he would
refrain from setting fire to that factory—es
pecially if it were not insured.
There are many business men that have put
not one million, but five millions, and ten mil
lions into an advertising reputation.
They have put their millions into words
and have created by them a reputation as solid
as any brick or any iron. That reputation IS
THEIR FORTUNE. That reputation is their
life work. It is not insured, it cannot be in
.sured. «
For the man who has put his millions into
advertising, to lower the quality o fhis goods,
to deceive the public, would be like setting fire
to his millions without any insurance.
The man who advertises gives hostages to
the public, and proves that it is his intention to
succeed by giving value, by living up to that
which he has promised.
A ft A
There are, of course, fraudulent advertisers,
although they are constantly becoming fewer.
And they are becoming fewer, thanks TO THE
POWER OF ADVERTISING ITSELF.
For the advertising of honest men and of
honest goods has made the work of deceitful
advertising more and more difficult, less and
less remunerative.
There is one gentleman in this country who
formerly made a fortune by advertising shot
-01 sa le, "like this picture,” and then
sending a gun made of wood that would Shoot
1,8 1S n °? « business in a
nent M ’ 7 ‘ he W ' “ a promi
V 6 ?' that first advertised a com-
And whe^.K , ° r f ” n ? ture ’ "“•"■y Uluatratio “•
inc coup to th • T er ' sent in his money and hav
hi h r a two -horse team, applied for
eovld h»v^ e J° U k d t • tt ud Set of toy furn iture which he
o d have taken back in his overcoat pocket.
♦ Ut tbat conc ? rn - n <> w in the control of an honest and
niteuigemt man, is doing a business of almost or.e han
dled minions a year, and doing a business absolutely hou
ora. ’ a managed so economically that it saves
millions annually to the farmers of this country—it is one
of the greatest mail order houses in the world. •
Advertising is no longer used to sell wooden nutmegs,
or to sell *‘ a fine steel engraving of George Washington
for fifty cents,” which turns out to be a United States
two-cent stamp with George Washington’s face upon it.
Advertising builds up the honest man and kills off the
dishonest man. There is more profit in bunding a great
grocery business and selling the best of nutmegs at a fair
small profit than there could possibly be in selling wood
en nutmegs.
ft * ft
Advertising has ceased tc be misrepresentation, and
it has become the honest voice of commerce, the agent of
economy—AND THE ECONOMY MUST BE CLEAR TO
ALL—it can be made clear in a very few words.
You have a merchant who does not advertise. He
pjys a clerk two dollars a day. And the clerk sells ten
dollars worth of goods.
THE HOME PAPER
Naturally, that merchant must first pay the clerk his
two dollars out of the ten dollars that you pay for jhe
goods. That means twenty per cent profit, to start with,
for the clerk alone.
And then the store, which represents high rent, must
take its part of your purchase money for rent, for heat,
for taxes, insurance.
And the proprietor must take his part.
Where the man who does not advertise pays two dol
lars to the clerk and two dollars for rent and a dollar for
insurance and delivery and sells ten dollars worth of
goods, HE MUST TAKE FIVE DOLLARS FOR EX
PENSES AND AT LEAST THREE DOLLARS FOR
HIMSELF—AND YOU GET TWO DOLLARS WORTH
OF GOODS.
A man with the same clerk and the sama store, AD
VERTISING, can sell one hundred dollars worth of
goods, so that out of one hundred dollars he can pay
the clerk and the rent and the taxes and the overhead,
and take the profit that he wants —and the whole thing
amounts to less than one-tenth, of the amount taken in.
ADVERTISING DOUBLES THE EFFICIENCY OF
THE CLERK, THE VALUE OF THE STORE, THE
POWER OF THE MERCHANT’S ORGANIZATION.
Only a child under five years of age could fail to see
that the man who advertises persistently, intelligently
and truthfully is saving the money of those that purchase
from him—inasmuch as he is making ft possible for the
SAME organization, the same equipment, to do many
times the amount of business that it would do without
advertising. And he can take for himself three or four
or five per cent profit on his sales —instead of forty per
cent, as the non-advertiser must do—and with his small
percentage of profit he can become an infinitely richer
man.
Nothing is more foolish than the fast-disappearing be
lief of the ignorant that when they buy goods, “they pav
for the advertising. ” They do nothing of the kind The
advertising pays for part of the goods and makes it pos
sible to deliver the goods cheaper.
ft ft ft
If we had the room to do so, it would be interesting
here to emphasize the importance of the really able ad
vertising man, advertising agent, or advertising writer.
The business man who grudges a commission to an ad
vertising agent who thinks ‘‘he ban do it himself” is
usually about as intelligent as he would be if he grudged
the commission of the architect and decided to build his
store for himself.
He would save the commission of the architect, but
ruin the store.
This is the age in which one man DOES ONE THING
You can run your BUSINESS. Find a man who can
RUN YOUR ADVERTISING.
And the advertising agent, able to get and manage
and place business, is foolish if he underestimates the
man that can WRITE ADVERTISING. To write an ad
vertisement is more difficult than to write anything else,
for he who writes an advertisement competes with thou
sands of writers, and he is trying to do the most difficult
thing, which is TO INTEREST ANOTHER MAN IN
THAT WHICH INTERESTS YOU.
The writer of an editorial, the writer of fiction, the
winter of jokes, has a task that is easy. He amuses the
reader; it is easy to get such a reader.
ft ft ft
The advertiser, the man who prepares the advertising
is THE CLERK V7HO TALKS TO ALL OF THE CUS
TOMERS. And the merchant especially should remem
ber this.
If any merchant hatl a clerk who talked to every cu«
tomer before that customer came, to the store, the mar
chant would consider no price tco great to pay for effi
cient service of that kind.
How many merchants and other business men fail to
remember that the advertising man IS THE CLERK
THAT TALKS TO ALL? More than that, he is the man
who forms public opinion as to the policy of the mer
chant or the other business which he represents.
He is the voice—the man who represents not merely
the bargains, the cash inducements, BUT THE CON
SCIENCE OF THE BUSINESS.
It would be possible to write many pages concerning
the difficulties of the art of preparing advertising.
For to-day, it is sufficient to indicate the four great
points in advertisement writing.
First, Your advertisements must be seen If it is not
looked at, it is lost. Make it CONSPICUOUS.
Second, Your advertisement must be read If it is n. t
lead, it is wasted. Make it S’NP’LE.
Third, Your advertisement must be understood. N.”
is not understood, it is aga in wasted. Make i F'L '
And, fourth, WHAT YOU WRITE MUST EE Fr
LIEVED. The power of convincing is the greatest P oue ;,
He who can make others believe and who is sincer? ;
believes himself, first cf ah i the ruccj.sfTJ niar
cveiy line,