:L. 1 V CIAL EXCHANGE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/commercialadvertOOrussrich STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. Edited by the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Xo. 58 in the Series of Monographs by writers connected with the London School of Economics and Political Science. COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING SIX LECTURES AT THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE (UNIVERSITY OF LONDON) LENT TERM I919 WITH ADDITIONS, INCLUDING INTRODUCTION AND APPENDIX BY THOMAS RUSSELL PRESIDEMT OF THE INCORPORATED SOCIETY OF ADVERTISEMENT CONSULTANTS SOMETIME ADVERTISEMENT-MANAGER OF " THE TIMES"; AUTHOR OF "success in retail ADVERTISING," ETC. LONDON y NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, LTD, 1919 ^"'L 'V^ First Published July 1919 •• • • , • • « . • '• • - •• • .•• • « " • * • I PREFACE THE Lectures forming the main part of this volume are reproduced, as far as possible in the original language, from the notes prepared in advance. A few passages which had to be omitted for lack of time have been restored. The audiences were composed of students at the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a number of young men and women contem- plating a career in Advertising, and some others already thus engaged. The average age must have been well under thirty. Several young men in khaki, chiefly from the Colonies, attended, with the evident purpose of taking back with them some knowledge of selling-methods in this Motherland. Thus the Lectures had to be confined with some strictness to practical subjects, treated in a fairly elementary fashion, though general commercial knowledge was assumed. For this reason it has been thought desirable to preface the text with an introductory sketch, indicating the derivations and present status of Commercial Advertising ; and to supplement it with an Appendix, discussing subjects which would have been included in the Lectures themselves had time permitted. This book does not purport to be a working text-book of Advertising, but rather a statement of practical principles. It will be noted that every 403251 vi PREFACE opportunity has been taken to illustrate the theories propounded, with examples described from actual practice. Wherever possible — that is, wherever discretion permitted — the actual names are given. On the principle enunciated in the text, l;hat policy- is greatly more important than * copy,' the miniature reproductions of newspaper advertisements which usually embellish books and technical periodicals devoted to this subject have been omitted. A little liveliness of appearance is no doubt thus sacrificed. But as it is perfectly useless to discuss advertise- ments without a full statement of the policy behind them, fully known only by the advertisers themselves, I preferred rather to approach the subject from the side which is really important. THOMAS RUSSELL. Clun House, London, W.C. 2. July, 1919. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION '^7 LECTURE I THE ECONOMIC JUSTIFICATION OF ADVERTISING Ancient prejudices dying — The new era in Advertising — The word ' advertise ' : its history — Advertising defined — Influence of Advertising in removing an objectionable secrecy — Modem reforms in advertisements traceable to the United States — The Printers' Ink Statute — Economics of Advertising — Advertising and its opponents — The influence of Advertising on prices — On new inventions — Economic usefulness of Advertising in standardisation of products — And in reducing expense of distribution — What retail prices are composed of — Advertising enlarges the market — Statistics in consumption of cocoa in Britain, and tobacco in the United States — How Advertising shortens the path of the product — Cutting out the middle-man — Proportion of Advertising to sales — Advertising as a waste-preventer — Sale of by-products made possible by Advertising — If there were no Advertising ? . . . . . . .45 LECTURE II ADVERTISING— ITS FUNCTIONS AND POLICY Commercial functions of Advertising — What Advertising will sell — How Advertising affects prices — Protection without a tariff — Advertising Policy defined — Considerations which dictate it — How Advertising maintains quality — Examples of Advertising Policy — Mistaken policy used by insurance advertisers — Advertising problems and problems solved by advertising — Unexpected profits in Advertising — Advertiser must keep faith with the public — The three functions of Advertising : to create a new want ; to increase the sale of anil *" established product ; to protect the advertiser against com-' petition — Introducing a new invention : a practical example — Merchandising problems — Competing with an established product : example of Farrow's Mustard — Press Advertising to secure retail distribution — The Times Book Club — Main- taining demand for an advertised product — Advertising to increase consumption — Ideas more important than ex- penditure — Who pays for Advertising ? — Cost of Advertising — Exact methods of Advertising — Statistical devices used in Advertising — Use of graphs and charts — Ratio of Advertis- ing to sales — the Curve of Pursuit 78 vii viii CONTENTS LECTURE III COPY-WRITING AND THE PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ADVERTISING PAGE Practical psychology in Advertising — Advertisement-writing — Nineteenth-century Advertising : the use of repetition — Twentieth-century Advertising : the appeal of reason — Improved Uterary form of modern advertisements — The appeal to emotion — ' Reason-why ' copy — The three functions of an advertisement : to attract, to convince, and to persuade — Attraction-value of pictures — Superior attrac- tion-value of headUnes — Suggestion by association of ideas — Uses of display type — Headhnes and headline-writing — Argument in Advertising — Use of pictures and diagrams — Putting the ' punch ' into Advertising — The art of advertise- ment-writing — A highly specialised calling — EngUsh the best language for Advertising — The importance of studying the goods advertised — ^What makes a strong and what a weak advertisement — Importance of definite statement — Use and abuse of brevity — Change of copy — Epigram run mad — Slogans — Qualifications of the advertisement-writer — Cleverness no substitute for honesty — Two ways of writing advertisements — Psychological effects of type-forms . .118 LECTURE IV THE HALL-MARK OF COMMERCE: TRADE-MARKS AND RETAIL ADVERTISING The interest of the purchaser paramount — Economic importance of enabUng consumer to recognise goods — Advertising with- out a trade-mark, and trade-marks without Advertising — Economic usefulness of trade-marks — Advertising expenses should be capitalised — Trade-marks and the Common Law — Origin of trade-marks — The appeal of the picture — Trade- marks : effective and ineffective — Some trade-mark dangers — Trade-marks must be protected — An official attack on trade-marks — Trade-marks that are dangerous — The sub- stitution problem — Two kinds of substitution — When sub- stitution is illegal — How to checkmate substitution — Mascots — The essential requirements of a good mascot — Organised maintenance of retail prices — Retail Advertising — The shop an equivalent of a trade-mark — Retail and whole- sale Advertising contrasted — When retail Advertising is news — When retail Advertising raised the circulation of a news- paper — Departmental store problems — A Canadian depart- mental store and its mail-order business — Retailers in special lines of business : their problems simpler than those of mixed retailers — ^What a retailer should advertise — Whole- salers advertising to shopkeepers — The commonest defect in trade-paper Advertising . . . . . , .146 CONTENTS ix LECTURE V THE THREE MAIN MODES OF ADVERTISING PACE Advertising not confined to newspapers — The Press, the Poster, and Printed -matter — Their ancillary modes — Difference between Advertising and Publicity — The Press the supreme medium for Advertising ; the Poster the supreme medium of Publicity — Where Press Advertising is the most ef&cient and economical mode — Selling goods of every-day consump- tion — SelUng technical products — The choice of a medium — Difi&culty of selecting individual papers — The Press classified for advertising purposes — The medium for products and utiUties of constant use — Classified Advertising as a test of circulation — Relative efficiency of morning and evening papers — Where the evening paper is supreme — Advertising for direct replies — Sunday and weekly newspapers — Their special use — Magazine advertisements — Foreign inquiries overvalued — Influence of newspapers on advertisements and of advertisements on newspapers — The evil of undisclosed circulation — Where the poster is the best advertisement — Billposting an economical mode of advertising — Posters as a means of securing retail distribution — Posters free from waste circulation — Circulars and pamphlets — Their advan- tages and disadvantages for advertising — Circulars by letter- post and book-post — Form-letters — Mechanical devices — The writing of form-letters — The two important parts — The pronoun ' you ' — Postscripts — Form-letters in Mail Order advertising . . . . . . . .180 LECTURE VI PART I.— MAIL-ORDER ADVERTISING The term ' Mail Order ' — American Mail Order Advertising — Importance of veracity — The worst obstacle to honest, mail- order Advertising — Selhng technical goods by mail order methods — Selling service by mail-order methods — Guaranteed advertising — The Encyclopedia Britannica a mail-order proposition — The Encyclopcsdia Britannica campaign described — Circularising for mail-order purposes — How to obtain names — How a mail-order advertisement should be framed — Statistical work in Mail Order — Follow- up systems — A fallacious follow-up — Making the follow-up automatic ......... 210 PART II.— ADVERTISING AS A CAREER Honest Advertising a modem invention — Growthjof scientific methods — Opportunities for intelligent workers — Advertis- ing not an art — Advertising a business easily entered — Advertising lavish in reward, but merciless in criticism — CONTENTS Qualifications of an advertising man — Training required — How to obtain training — Where varied businesses can be studied — Amateur work not wanted — Research work and advertising pohcy : Examples — Research work on business records — Influence of Advertising upon salesmanship and upon production — Openings for the copywriter — How a copy- writer is trained — How advertising men advance — Adminis- trative work in Advertising : the Contract Department — How to study Advertising — Conclusion . . . .235 APPENDIX 257 INDEX 299 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING INTRODUCTION Advertising : Its Past, Present, and Future THE historical aspects of Advertising will only be discussed here in so far as they derive practical importance from the way in which modern Commercial Advertising is affected by its origins. Advertising had its birth when the first maker of a useful commodity had served all the customers who came to him unsought, and used some mode of making known his ability tq supply J wares to others. Perhaps he was a 'cave^dwellex Jw}{o allowed to be visible from the entrance of his abode more stone axes than a family of the prehistoric age customarily employed in its pursuit of food. Advertising as a definite business may be more con- veniently said to have been born when merchants and manufacturers first began to employ someone else to promote their sales. This definition, at all events, will bring the ancientry of Advertising within manageable limits. Readers desirous of delving deeper into the guilty past may go — if they can find it — to the only history of Advertising in existence, so far as I am aware, the late Henry Sampson's 1 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING amusing volume of 1874,^ now a scarce book. Samp- son, afterwards better known as ' Pendragon ' of the Referee, was not a weighty writer on the subject, and gives no evidence of knowing — or caring — anything at all about Advertising. The book is in no sense complete. It skips long periods without shame, and dwells at disproportionate length on anything which the author happened to find amusing. He devotes a long chapter of fifty-three pages to Lotteries and Lottery Insurances, and another nearly half as long to Matrimonial Advertisements from 1695 to his own time. Another entire chapter describes in detail an old swindle, Graham's Celestial Bed, and an establishment (over which the future Lady Hamilton presided) known as the Temple of Health. There is little or no indication that the author had ever considered Advertising as a serious business. The history, in fact, is a sad piece of ' book-making.' The subject awaits its serious historian. . ^ • ' c^ • ; Advertising 'applied to useful commercial ends, ^•§ '. disti^i^uished . from the swindles described by Sariajpson, was, at the beginning of things, a bald statement that someone had desirable commodities for sale. Very soon, exaggeration and flowery language crept into the simple announcement. News- papers of the eighteenth century contain advertise- ments that are straightforward enough. But the temptation to claim for the goods more merit than they really possessed seems to have been too much for the integrity of the retail tradesmen who were the * A I History of Advertising | From the Earliest Times. | Illustrated by Anecdotes, curious specimens and | biographical notes, | By Henry Sampson. | With illustrations and fac-similes. | London | Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly, j 1874. (Cloth extra, gilt, ys. 6d.) INTRODUCTION S' only advertisers ; and a century of experience, during which manufacturers discovered that the easiest way to sell goods by wholesale was to do the retailer's selling for him by advertising to the consumer, was required to lead up to a greater discovery still. The example of a minority of traders, who were en- lightened enough to advertise, but too upright to say in print what they would have been ashamed to say in person, presently showed that there was money to be made by telling the truth. The business of Advertising still suffers from the prejudices created by earlier misconduct. Adver- tisement in the early nineteenth century had become synonymous with claptrap and misrepresentation. Nobody believed that mere truth would sell the goods. But Advertising had become a necessity. Anyone who wanted to do business on a large scale must advertise in some way, and competition forced publicity upon the unwilling. Declining to follow the evil precedent set by their less scrupulous rivals, several firms hit upon a way out of the difficulty. They desired to advertise. They were, in fact, bound to advertise if they were to obtain value for their investments in plant. The development of machinery and the use of steam, bringing in their train the factory system, left them no alternative. It became more and more expensive to set up in business as a manufacturer of anything. The old way of making things by hand had not required much money for plant. The new way required a great deal of money, and large buildings. Unless the output were large, rent and its equivalents, interest on capital and its equivalents, and everything that a modern accountant calls ' overhead expense ', 4 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING would be crippling. But large output was useless unless the goods could be sold. Advertising was the only way to sell them. Rejecting with honourable disdain the thought of saying things about their wares that were not true, some large manufacturers hit upon a brilliant idea. They would announce their goods. But they would say nothing about them at all, or as little as might be. The name, and the name alone, was blazoned forth, on crude posters ; by advertisements in large, heavy type or blocks of white letters on a solid ground of black ; or in some newspapers with queer effects obtained by repeating the name of the goods again and again in the smallish type to which these newspapers confined advertisements. Wher- ever the eye of the public turned, it was liable to encounter the advertiser's name. Illustration was, at first, little used. Some later genius conceived the idea that people would look longer at a word if there were a pretty picture near it. You could not eat the jam without the powder : you could not, that is, look at the picture without reading the words. The psychology of the results obtained by such publicity as this lies a little way — though not far — below the surface. It is doubtful whether the plan was adopted with any clear notion of how it would work. The fact that it did work is due, in part, to the law, then unformulated, that only wares that are worth the purchaser's while to buy are worth the vendor's while to advertise. Assuredly, in the limited markets of the mid- Victorian era, the amount of the very crude (and therefore costly) publicity required to sell every unit afresh, would have swamped INTRODUCTION =5 the profits. These displayed advertisements sold goods which proved meritorious, and the merit of the goods caused them to be bought again. Publicity produced customers, not one-time sales. The fact that, through their inefficiency, the ever-repeated announcements of this period must have cost a very large sum in proportion to the sales which they created, crushed out the seller of inferior merchandise. He did not know, probably, why he was crushed ; but the progressive logic of events was leading up to the discovery which has made modern— that is, honest — Advertising a public benefit, where the antiquated Advertising that went before the simple- display era was a public nuisance. Why, however, did publicity of the mere name — repetition carried to its limit — sell anything at all ? What is the psychological law behind the fact that if you see the words ' Pears' Soap ' often enough you will presently wash with Pears' soap ? Did the constant repetition of what would nowadays be called a * slogan ' convince people that Epps's cocoa was really * grateful — ^comforting ' ? I think the explanation, in which are also implied the limitations, of how this kind of publicity worked its wonders, can be stated with certainty. In psychological terms the effect is explained by the doctrine of association of ideas. Physiologically, it is an effect of fatigue. Commercially, it is an effect obtained through the tendency of every force to follow the line of least resistance. By frequently associating the idea ^ cocoa ' with the name Epps, Mr. Epps obtained the result, that when either of these words was recalled to memory, it brought with it the other. A person 6 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING who had seen them together sufficiently often could not think of cocoa without also thinking of Epps. Whether he consciously worked along this route or not, Mr. Epps did, in fact, cause everyone to be seeing the words ' Epps's Cocoa ' very often : and, his name being a little unusual, he skilfully assisted the public memory by adding the more familiar words ' grateful — comforting.' Very likely what Mr. Epps thought he was doing, was publishing a truthful description of his product, and doing no more. What he really did was to print a truthful description of his product, associating with it agreeable ideas. But, con- sidering the general state of Advertising in the middle of the nineteenth century, I do not think that he made people believe that Epps's cocoa was grateful and comforting, merely because he said so. I think he only made the name easier to recall. Other advertisers said less : ' Bennett's Watches ', ' Reckitt's Paris Blue ', ' Crosby's Cough Elixir ', ' Fry's Pure Cocoa', are each the entire wording of a whole advertisement in a newspaper of 1840, now in my possession. It is, of course, a fact that the brain is unconsciously fatigued by every impression that it receives, and by each effort that it makes. By fatiguing the part of the brain which is affected by the optic nerve, the effect called hypnosis can be produced : and a hypnotised person is influenced by suggestion in altogether abnormal ways. The constant repetition of a name has a brain-wearying effect, which it would be going rather far, perhaps, to call hypnotic, but which does exercise a certain amount of suggestion in the hypnotist's sense. It will be recalled that investigators of one scientific INTRODtrcTlON > School attribute all hypnotic phenomena to pure suggestion : the revolving mirrors or * passes ' of the other schools are by these investigators believed to act, not through the eyes, but directly on the mind, by suggestion. Without carrying the analogy of hypnotism too far, it may be said with certainty that thought, like any other force, does tend to follow the line of least resistance. When the mind is called upon for an idea, it will select, if it can, the one which can be produced with the smallest effort. In popular language, we say whatever we first think of. We do not delve into the abysms of consciousness. The first association called up by the applied stim\ilus comes out. Judgment, selection, criticism, are much more complex operations of the mind than recollection. Will, in any strict sense, requires still more effort. Without knowing it, we have a tendency to shirk these greater efforts of mind unless we are conscious of some reason for enduring them. Fatigue is being endured, when a person is in a shop, through a variety of unperceived causes. Perhaps the attention of the shopper is divided between ordering and paying for goods and the conversation of a companion. The complicated appeals of all the merchandise dis- played, and perhaps the ' pushing ' of wares by the shopman, are also overlain by efforts of memory : * What else was I to buy when I came to the grocer's ? Oh ! cocoa. Some cocoa, Mr. Rhys.' * What kind of cocoa, madam ? ' ' Epps's, please.' The first association called up by the word ' cocoa ' triumphs. We follow the line of least resistance. But the association of ideas created by mere repetition is much less powerful than the impulse created by critical judgment. Even the association t COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING of ' grateful — comforting ' with * Epps ' does not act so powerfully as the effect of an argument which has convinced us that some other kind of cocoa is more palatable, more digestible, or in some other way more desirable, than Epps's. In the terms used a little earlier, such a conviction does supply the mind with a motive for enduring the greater effort of deciding according to reason, instead of following the line of least resistance. When Blondeau & Cie first began to exploit their discovery that it was possible to say something else about soap besides the name, the policy which they adopted, as they conceived themselves obliged to attack the great popular demand enjoyed by Pears' soap, was to use elaborate arguments in favour of Vinolia soap, including a veiled attack on Pears'. They explained the objectionable effects of any soap not specially protected against excess of alkalinity. They stated that the natural tendency of soap was to be alkaline, and that it was very difficult to make soap in such a way as to be exactly neutral. An excess of fatty matter, on the other hand, was, they contended, rather an advantage than otherwise. To avoid any possibility of alkaline excess, therefore, said the advertisements, Vinolia soap contained extra cream (a much nicer expression than ' fatty acids '), and people who valued their skins might now know how these could be protected. Now it is certain that a person who had read this argument, and been convinced by it, would have an inducement to fight against the association of ideas which had long made ' Pears ' and ' Soap ' seem synonymous terms. The Vinolia advertising was the first heavy attack on the ascendancy which INTRODUCTION 9 Pears' soap had acquired by advertisements which nearly always consisted, either of the name alone, or occasionally of this name with a very little added matter. Events were moving. Even the Pears' soap advertisements did sometimes say something. The late Mr. Barratt had a geat belief that the relatively small size of a cake of Pears' soap, when compared with other soaps, militated against its sale, though its lower humidity and consequent hardness made it last longer, because there was a smaller waste from solution. Mr. Barratt sometimes used an argument from this fact : Pears' soap was all soap : not soap and water. But except for slogans, like the famous and rather meaningless * Good morning,' and little quips ^ and riddles, or a testimonial like Mrs. Weldon's : ' I am 50 to-day ; but thanks to Pears' Soap my complexion is only 15 ' (it is quite true that she had a complexion like a young girl), a Pears' soap advertisement rarely said anything of importance except ' Pears' Soap.' It is rather a striking lesson on the progress of advertisement-making to compare the Pears' soap advertising of the last twelve months with that which was used earlier. Of course, the various ' dodges ' of which Mr. Barratt was fond, operated in exactly the same way as a simple printing of the name. There was nothing to make people admire the quality of Pears' soap in the fact that he caused Pears' soap to be talked about by solemnly offering to print the census-forms of 1891 for nothing, if the Government would let him put an advertisement on the back. The purchase of Sir John Millais' ^ E.g., * What is the diflference between Pears' Soap and the Arab steed of the desert ? One washes the beautiful ; the other scours the plain.' to COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING worst picture, and of the amusing * Dirty Boy * statuette, showed enterprise ; but they advertised the name, not the goods. The same is true of the stamping of French coins, which ceased, as a result, to be current money in this country. Everywhere? though a great deal was said about Pears, very little else was said about soap. Evidently Blondeau & Cie had an opportunity, which they used with great persistence and some skill, when they did advertise soap, and used what is now called ' reason-why copy,' to attack the entrenched position in New Oxford Street ; but that position was, in fact, very strongly entrenched. Vinolia soap had a long struggle. It is common knowledge, I think, that the struggle was a hard one. But with some luck, and the advantage of argument over repetition, Vinolia soap established itself. I do not think it did so in the way that the proprietors obviously thought that it must establish itself if at all ; and the struggle of the lion and the lamb that have now lain down together (with Lord Leverhulme in the attractive character of the little child that leads them) has only been recalled at this length in order to illustrate the real weakness of the repetitive, or single-name school of Advertising. Mr. Barratt advertised Pears. Blondeau & Cie advertised soap. Mr. Barratt did nothing calculated to increase the demand for soap. Any sales that he effected were, in great part (and entirely, for anything that he did to the contrary) effected by taking business away from someone else. But Blondeau & Cie said a very great deal about the usefulness of soap. Their advertising did un- doubtedly increase the consumption of soap, which INTRODUCTION tt Pears' publicity did not. A great many people, careful of their looks, used to eschew soap when washing their faces, believing it bad for the com- plexion. Blondeau & Cie argued that Vinolia Soap was good for the complexion. Undoubtedly they made converts. It is questionable whether they took business away from Pears' to any important extent. Any variations in Pears' output was probably due to other causes. The difference between modern Advertising, or the spreading of information about goods, and the antiquated use of Publicity, or merely announcing the name of a brand, is precisely this — thr.^ good Advertising does always increase the total consump- tion of goods in the class. Publicity, if it does any- thing of the kind at all, does it much less. In one of the ensuing lectures, some figures are cited, showing how Advertising has increased the total demand for cocoa in this country, and for tobacco and cigarettes in the United States. The Dr. Tibbies Company, the new cocoa-advertiser whose proceedings so alarmed the older cocoa houses that they greatly increased their advertising in order to protect their trade, did not use publicity at all. Even its posters were advertising, in the strict sense : indeed, it advertised cocoa as if cocoa were a patent medicine. The increased advertising of the other cocoas (espe- cially Rowntree's) at first partook much more of an argumentative character than later efforts. Advertising, then, has a creative effect, and this effect has only begun to be important in the more recent history of the business. The old publicity was rather a weapon used in the struggle for existing demand than a maker of new wants other than those 12 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING plainly factitious and uneconomic, like the desire for perpetual youth (as in Graham's Temple) or the desire for success in the Lottery, and so forth. Modern Advertising, the Advertising of the present period, does not merely alter the way in which a commodity is distributed, but actually causes more of it to be manufactured and consumed. An incident of the process is that sometimes the manufacturing cost of the commodity is lowered, because the more largely anything is manufactured, the less it costs per unit. There can always be, as well, the potential economies in distribution, described in the first lecture within. The economic soundness of the increased consumption made possible by Advertising depends on the nature of the thing advertised : the community would not be enriched if the advertising of fireworks caused the output of squibs and rockets to be doubled. It is assuredly not being enriched this year by the silly encouragement of bonfire-making at Peace-time, when the country is bitterly short of fuels. There is more in the question than this, however. Setting aside entirely useless luxuries and wastes, a great many commodities, of which the consumption has been increased by advertising, either are definitely useful and reproductive, or contribute to rational pleasures and relaxations. What is the economic aspect of anything which increases the sale of either ? Since cocoa has been used as an example, is it an economic gain to the community that the consump- tion of cocoa has been trebled in the last quarter of a century, or is it an evil ? There is no doubt about the fact that the quantity of cocoa consumed since the big cocoa-advertising INTRODUCTION 13 began is greater than it would have been, if cocoa had not been thus greatly advertised. Cocoa is a food- product : it tends to increase weight, create a certain amount of energy in the human body, and to keep us warm. It is to a very great extent a worker's beverage, and probably the increased quantities of cocoa consumed did not very greatly reduce the con- sumption of tea and coffee. People who desire tea at a given time will commonly have tea : they will not drink cocoa instead. A little less coffee may have been consumed ; probably a good deal less beer. Workmen who used to take a can of beer to the factory take a can of cocoa instead. This is an undoubted economic gain. Turning barley into beer withdraws a definite amount of a useful and desirable food from the market, and thus tends to make food dearer. Moreover, if we accept the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, every drink of beer measurably reduces the working capacity of the man who drinks it, to say nothing of the economic losses resulting from excess when a drunkard is temporarily unable to work and is perhaps locked up, costing the community money for policemen, gaolers, magistrates, the rental value of prisons, and other wastes. The pint of beer that a man takes to the workshop does not, probably, contribute very much to this loss, which can be ignored. In so far as the greater consumption of cocoa means a smaller consumption of beer, however, it is an economic gain. But there are commodities of which the consumption is increased by advertising without raising this question. I have no doubt that the advertisements of Turog, Hovis, Bermaline, Veda, 14 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING and other breads, increase the consumption of bread. When the Daily Mail was running the ' Standard Bread ' agitation, the total consumption of bread rose. Was this an economic gain ? It was, if more bread was eaten instead of some other food of a less sound physiological character, or if through buying more bread, people who were under- nourished brought their dietary up to the proper standard. (I am not considering, for the moment, any advantage gained through the higher nutritive value, if any, of Standard bread or the breads adver- tised in more orthodox ways.) But if you are going to probe the matter to the bottom, the question that will have to be settled will be this : if the money had not been spent on bread in the one case, and on cocoa in the other, on what would it have been spent ? If it would otherwise have been spent on fireworks, and other wastes, or on alcohol and other injurious products, the community gained by the money being spent on bread and cocoa. If the only consequence was that people ate more bread and cocoa than other foods and drinks which are better value for money, the community was injured. And it was also injured if money which otherwise would have been kept in the bank, financing commerce and industry, was needlessly spent. Of course, increases of consumption due to Adver- tising are much less frequent, and are smaller, in the market for necessaries, than in the market for articles of convenience and luxury. Is the com- munity a gainer when some thousands of women get through their housework with less toil because they have been led by advertisements to purchase vacuum cleaners, Bissell carpet-sweepers, and other INTRODUCTION 15 labour-saving appliances ? Surely the answer must be Yes ! If the answer were anything else, we must, logically, go back to the Stone Age. Advertising has created a new want. But the number of our wants is the measure of our civilisation. The luxuries of one age are the necessities of the next, and Adver- tising, when it teaches us to demand rational and civilising things, is a benefit to the community. This point has been laboured a little, because I showed that the creation of entirely new demand was the distinctive function of reasoned advertise- ment. Pure publicity, as I have defined it, is still quite extensively used, and can be used with efficiency, provided the function of it is clearly understood. Publicity is not an efficient selling-agency when it is made to carry the entire burden : the ratio of expense to sales will then be too high. But as an adjunct to Advertising proper it has much value. A poster, for instance, even if it displays nothing but the name of a brand, supplements Press-advertis- ing, and makes the latter more effective by reminding the consumer of his wants when he is out-of-doors and the shops are handy ; and it also impresses his memory through its powerful, sledge-hammer attack upon the mind. Even in poster-advertising, the mere name alone is being to-day less and less used by people who understand how to advertise. It is quite possible to construct a pictorial argument, or devise a picture that embodies a selling-inducement. The merit of Mr. John Hassall's designs lies less in his extraordinary knack of depicting expression, than in his still more extraordinary gift of pictorial salesmanship. A Hassall poster is never a mere picture, or a mere joke, exquisitely ludicrous though i6 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING it often is. It is an argument, a suggestion, a piece of true salesmanship. Printing a name or a trade-mark all alone, then — chimcsra homhinans in vacuo — belongs to the past of Advertising. Present-day Advertising sees the appeal to reason gaining force. The big single-name adver- tisers were driven to the method which they exploited, by the persistent exaggerations of advertisers who used fallacious argument and insincere exposition. Having proved, during a period of over half a century, that it was better to say nothing than to say what was not true, advertisers in the future will say a great deal more than most advertisers say now, but will take great pains to say nothing untruthful. There is still some difficulty in defining exactly what things are the best to say when you want to sell goods. The most unlikely printed matter some- times does the business. Some years before the late War, a grower of potatoes who had built up a large trade by supplying these vegetables directly to consumers showed me the pamphlet which he found successful in promoting his business. His practice was to use quite small spaces in, I think, the Daily Graphic^ offering a sack of potatoes, carriage paid, on terms just a little below the ordinary greengrocer price. Every order received was carefully recorded, and at the proper seasons of the year all the people who had ordered his potatoes received the little book which he showed me. The result was to bring him repeat orders for all the potatoes that he could grow, and sometimes more. He had told me that he did remarkably well, and I examined the book with interest, desiring to learn what a clever advertiser could find to say on so uninteresting a subject as INTRODUCTION 17 the potato. He said nothing whatever about potatoes. The book consisted entirely of a list of the names and addresses of people who had bought potatoes from him. His pamphlet was a copy of his mailing list ! Having already seen his figures, I declined with- out enthusiasm to advise any change in his mode of advertisement, and decided that in all probability this book, which no human being could have read except the proof-reader, must have produced the following train of thought : * If all the people in this long list, page after page, are buying the man's potatoes, he must have a big business. If he were not giving them good value, he would not dare to print their names. Here goes ! Let us send him the money.' Another advertiser whose evident success is much more difficult — I think impossible — to explain is the extraordinary Mr. Eno. His pictures never, and his text very seldom, have anything what- ever to do with his goods. Robert Louis Steven- son called them (what they certainly were not) * the most indecent advertisements I have ever seen '. They are, on the contrary, full of moral * uplift ' and a sort of sentimental enthusiasm ; but they have nothing to do with fruit salt. Most often even the name is not prominently displayed, and I am credibly informed that on one occasion the name was accidentally omitted altogether, without anyone missing it, and without any traceable damage to the business. ' Bibby's Annual ', a magnificent and lavishly printed publication which, I should think, must cost Bibby & Co. a very great deal more than the sale of it can return, is just as difficult to understand — if it is an advertisement at all. But i8 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING it may bring results. It is never safe to criticise an advertisement or a mode of advertising unless the inside facts and secrets behind it are known. The ineptitudes and stupidities which disfigure a great proportion of the newspaper advertisements now appearing are the signs of a transitional period. Some businesses seem to exercise a stultifying in- fluence upon advertising. There is, for example, little tobacco or cigarette advertising that is not silly, and some of it is worse. But the tendency is towards improvement. The literary work in a good many modern advertisements is excellent, and the demand for good literary treatments is increasing every year. I know of a very considerable adver- tisement contract that was taken away from one agent and given to another on account of a simple grammatical blunder ! The long vogue of simple * name ' Advertising led to a demand for brevity in copy which has had the effect of militating against literary merit. Putting a case into a very few words is not so much a literary achievement as a trick of thought. It is given to few men to write a good advertisement in fewer words than the three into which Mr. Andrew W. Tuer thus condensed the story of a famous pro- duct : * Stickphast Paste Sticks '. An advertise- ment in a single sentence, of which it takes an advertising man to appreciate the real brilliancy, said ' Inside the airtight case of the 5 j-. IngersoU Watch you will find the two-year guarantee ' — or nearly this ; I may be wrong about the period. Advertise- ments in the future, as I shall argue when I reach that part of the subject, will be less brief than it is now usually believed that they need to be. INTRODUCTION 19 The real characteristic of the best of the present day's Advertising, however, is its insistence on sincerity. America, as I said in the first of the Lectures which follow, has done a great deal for the betterment of Advertising. No treatment of this subject would be complete, or could be just, if it did not pay tribute to the great influence of the late John E. Powers, the most distinguished adver- tising man of the United States. What is called * the Powers style ' of writing and printing advertise- ments has sometimes obscured the greater claims of Mr. Powers to supremacy among the men whose practice has affected the whole business. He dis- liked pictures and display-type. He especially abhorred a capital letter, except at the beginning of a sentence or of a proper noun. He thought that one particular type-face beat every other : it is always easy to recognise an advertiser who has come under the influence of Mr. Powers, by his plainly printed letterpress note-heading, all in Caslon old-style type. Mr. Powers also affected a jerky, elliptical manner of writing, which sometimes made him a little difficult to understand ; and he was so afraid lest he should say anything about a product that he was advertising, beyond what was strictly true, or that he should obscure any of its defects, that he some- times appeared more anxious to warn the customer than to sell him the goods. But his manner, and even his mannerisms, are unimportant. It is likely that very many bad copy-writers have been produced by an effort to imitate the inimitable. The glory of Mr. Powers's life-work in Advertising was his insistence upon the two things which have most advanced the 20 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING business : sincerity and service. I did not know Mr. Powers and never saw him. What I have seen of his work, and of the advertisers whom he influenced, justifies me in acclaiming him as the strongest and most beneficent influence that modern Advertising has seen. The dumb yearning for a sincerity which drove advertisers of the middle nineteenth century to the use of simple announcement found its most clamorous exponent in him. The desire was there ; but it had not been put into terms. The dilemma existed : if we do not advertise, we cannot sell enough goods to pay the interest on our capital ; if we advertise our goods according to current practice, we must tell lies about them. Simple announce- ment — advertising, not the goods but the name — had been the only solution. But presently, in the brain of some commercial genius, was born the great idea. We will advertise our goods as well as our name ; but we won't lie about the goods. Those who adopted the new policy prepared themselves for a sacrifice. It was not believed to be quite so profitable to tell the truth as it was to lie : it was only right. Probably the first exponents of the modern plan believed themselves to be suffering some little disadvantage. It took a long time to find out that they were, on the contrary, stealing a long march on the brigands. It is necessary to draw a small distinction here. Apart from novelties, like tea, the advertising of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was mostly about perfectly useless things. The factory system, as I have tried to show, had much to do with bringing staple products into the field of the advertisable — INTRODUCTION 21 into the domain, in fact, of businesses that must be advertised in order to live. Most of the things advertised, up to that time, were poor value. If you want to tell lies in advertisements you must provide a huge profit to pay for the advertisements. Every time you have taken anyone in, you have reduced your market. The population was not so large as it is now, and even if it was still, as Carlyle said early in the new period, * mostly fools,' the fools found out when they had been defrauded, and a defrauded fool is a dangerous enemy. But it is not only about worthless, or nearly worthless, products that it is possible to lie. The merits of really sound merchandise can be exaggerated. One of the greatest difficulties of an advertising-man is to persuade advertisement- writers that this exaggeration is not a help to sales, but a hindrance. Progress, at the present time, is along the line of eliminating exaggeration rather than diametrical untruthfulness. By the time Mr. Powers was making his influence felt, American advertisers, at least, had outgrown the use of simple publicity. I am afraid that a good many of them were exploiting somewhat hardily the uses of mis- representation. Advertising-reform had a share in cutting out some other abuses, too. Mr. Wanamaker, a Philadelphia shopkeeper who was an early employer of Mr. Powers, created a great sensation by being the first conspicuous retail merchant to ticket his goods in plain figures, and charge the same price to everyone : previously, the habit had been for the counter-assistants to get as much as they could, being guided by a secret mark showing the minimum. Mr. Wanamaker became the most conspicuous advertiser of the day. One implement employed 22 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING by Mr. Powers had a psychological idea behind it, discussed in one of the lectures within.^ Exaggerated advertisements were, at the time, commonly printed in correspondingly exaggerated type. (They are much more commonly printed in very small type, nowadays, both in Britain and America.) Extreme simplicity of lettering, and a simplicity of wording which later became even rather excessive, were used by Mr. Powers to suggest the truthfulness which he practised.^ Modern commercial Advertising has done great service to business and the public, through its dis- covery that honesty pays. This service is made all the more efficient by the fact that there is no pretence that anyone loses money by it. As I have said, the early truth-tellers were prepared for a sacrifice. They achieved, on the contrary, an astounding success. Advertising of the kind which I persistently call ' modern ' is a great deal more profitable than Advertising ever was, prior to the great discovery which separates its antiquated period from modernity with the same sharpness as the invention of printing marks the end of the Middle Ages in History. It is to be noted, that the reform of Advertising came from within. The Press, which makes such a parade of ignoring its greatest source of revenue, * Lecture III, p. 144. ■ Later, in the service of another retailer, he attempted to establish a new business on the plan of selling everything, for a fixed period, at its exact cost. The idea was a bold one. The shop expected, by good service and pleasant shopping arrangements, to set up the habit of using it. I do not defend the notion : personally, I think this plan objectionable in many ways. But that does not matter. After a little while, Mr. Powers discovered that his employers were not playing the game. They were not seUing at cost price. He immediately withdrew his services, throwing up a lucrative contract, and letting everyone know the reason. INTRODUCTION 13 had nothing to do with the matter. So long as advertisers were willing to pay for it, no lie was too outrageous for a newspaper to print. To-day, in a vast majority of publications, any exaggeration that is not visibly and penally fraudulent can be inserted without question. A very few, led by London Opinion under the advertising management of my friend Mr. John Hart, assume responsibility for the advertisements which they insert. It can be said in defence, that as it is hardly practicable for a publisher to investigate, with sufficient thoroughness to eliminate every possible misrepresentation, all the businesses for which he provides advertisement-space, he had better not intermeddle. In proportion as he is known to reject advertisements which he discovers to be objectionable, he gives his protection to all the others, which he admits. As the public cannot be protected to the uttermost, it is better that it shall be left to its own sagacity, and taught to question all things. The Courts of Justice give a most immoral sanc- tion to dishonesty, through the doctrine of ' trade exaggeration,' holding that a certain amount of misrepresentation is to be expected of a business man : otherwise where does the maxim, caveat emptor^ come in ? No one, I think, can defend this. It may be good law, though I doubt it. It is certainly very abominable practice; and my good fortune has brought me the happiness of knowing many adver- tisers who are almost fanatically scrupulous in eliminating from their announcements all but the most unquestionable truth. And the ground which they take is unassailable. After the habit of our 24 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING nation, they do not mention conscientious scruples : they would hate like anything to be caught moralising on the subject. They say, ' We must be careful not to say the thing is too good : otherwise people will not believe us ! ' The hardest-headed men of busi- ness are precisely those who insist that the truth is a gold-mine, even if gold-mines are not always the truth when they appear on the Stock Exchange. As already remarked, the Press had nothing to do with Advertising-reform. I do not complain of this. If the Press believes in the argument which I have put into its mouth, above, let the Press go ahead, and live with it. But I really do complain a little that the Press, in its amazing self-righteousness, should treat every advertised product as a sort of pariah, or an indecent subject, whose flagitious identity must be veiled by periphrases or dashes, after the custom of authors who write ' d — n,' be- cause they think this doesn't look so wicked as ' damnation.' If, through some accident, an adver- tised product enters into the news, the papers will go ever so far round to avoid naming it : * The pro- prietors of a well-known toilet-preparation chartered a river-steamer at the boat-race.' ' Mr. Roscius Mummer ' (there is, for some obscure reason, nothing but good in dragging in the name of an actor) ' ad- dressed the crowd standing on a box labelled 's soap.' If an advertiser really wants to get into the news columns, he must either commit bigamy or have his factory burned down. Until a few years ago, not only advertised goods, but the very subject of Advertising in the abstract, was excluded from mention in any respectably con- ducted journal. Presumably the idea was that the INTRODUCTION 25 Press might otherwise be considered as subservient to the commercial influence of Advertising. Fre- quently — most often in the columns of papery which could not possibly exist, except by virtue of advertis- ing-space sold above its true value — the notion is ventilated that the Press is muzzled by advertisers. The paradoxical fact is, that the Press is only indepen- dent when it does live on its advertising revenue.* Of late years, while showing little sign of increased tenderness for advertisers, the Press has shown more respect for Advertising in itself, ^he Times, during 1904-5, published in its Financial and Commercial Supplement, then under the accomplished editorship of Mr. F. Harcourt Kitchin (afterwards the editor of the Glasgow Herald, and now of the Board of Trade Journal) a number of articles by myself. They were cautiously headed * From a Correspondent,' and in them, so far as I know or can ascertain. The Times, for the first time in its history, recognised the existence of Advertising. Its example had great influence. The Press became more hospitable to the subject. References to, and articles about. Advertising appeared from time to time. The Evening News invited me to contribute a long series intituled * The Curious Side of Advertising,' afterwards reprinted, through the kind permission of the Editor, by Mr. Walter Hill. Later still, a movement to ' Advertise Advertising ' was initiated by some members of the now famous Aldwych Club, and a considerable number of news- papers gave space for displayed advertisements, addressed to the public, and setting forth the ad- vantages to be derived from the purchase of adver- * Vide Appendix, p. 289. 26 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING tised goods. A small space, similarly employed, appears every week in London Opinion, and the same device was adopted by Mr. Philip Emanuel after he left that paper to become advertisement manager of the Passing Show, But, as I have said, the Press has not in general been a pioneer of Advertising-reform. Improve- ments in Advertising have come from within. Service, the second great advance and the most modern, also came from within. It may be defined as the product of that spirit in commerce which refuses to be satisfied with the profit derived from a business transaction, unless the other party to that transaction derives a full measure of benefit. It is the spirit of a seller's * divine discontent ' when the buyer is not a gainer by his purchase. It is the antithesis of the spirit in salesmanship which regarded the buyer as the victim of the seller. It goes far beyond supplementing the mere transfer of owner- ship in an advertised commodity with some other act or gift ' given away with a pound of tea.' ' Service,' it will be seen, is a rather elusive thing. Mr. Selfridge's rest-rooms and other conveniences, the dining-car accommodation on trains, the temporary free tunings included in the price of a piano, the privilege of having the remaining instal- ments waived if you die while paying by the month for furniture bought of certain firms, and similar gratuitous amenities, are all * service.' But in its best sense, the word means far more than doing something to make a purchase more attractive. It means treating the whole relation of seller to buyer as including the obligation to give the buyer the completest and most justified satisfaction. If you INTRODUCTION 27 happen to own a Kodak, the company which manu- factures the most famous of all photographic appliances will, at any of its numerous branches, take any amount of trouble to improve the results obtained with it. This is * service.' Sales-managers call that kind of post-sale treatment ' keeping the goods sold,' and the system goes beyond any case where the contract of sale provides for the return of the money if the buyer repents of his bargain. A great deal of modern salesmanship by advertise- ment includes the ' money-back ' system, and this is a form of ' service.' Three very conspicuous examples of it in this country have been Fels-naptha soap, Brooke Bond's tea (both under the influence of Mr. Powers), and the large mail-order business in cigars of my friend Mr. Walter Martin. Money-back trading is undoubtedly ^ service.' So is the plan on which, following the * Encyclopaedia Britannica' scheme, costly works of reference arc constantly sent ' on approval ' before the applicant commits himself to a purchase : so, indeed, is instal- ment-selling in itself. There is no doubt an easy psychological explanation of the success with which approval and money-back selling appeal to the public purse. If the seller is willing to back his recommendation thus thoroughly, the recommenda- tion becomes more credible. It is much easier to use this psychological appeal where the advertiser trusts the public instead of asking the public to trust him. The enormous success of the first ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' cam- paign was due to Mr. H. E. Hooper's unshakeable and still unshaken belief in the public. ' I am certain,' he said to me, * that 95 per cent, of the 28 COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING people are honest,' and the collection-figures in all his bookselling campaigns proved his estimate arithmetically correct.^ In so far as it is able to reduce the price of com- modities (my first Lecture is almost entirely devoted to proofs and examples of this), Advertising has an implicit element of Service. Obviously the advertiser makes a profit by retaining part of the economy. It would be unreasonable to expect him not to do so. He is entitled to pay himself for his risk and for his investment. Where he obtains more than an ordinary competitive profit, it is because he is able to create a more or less temporary monopoly in a new product, or because consumers are willing to pay a little more for a guarantee of standardised quality. If this product is of real utility, who shall say that consumers do not derive more advantage from it, even at the somewhat artificial price which pays for the expense of introducing it to them, than they would from saving the money and going without it altogether ? If the thing is worth having, the advertising of it is a service to them. By making itself useful to the public, and by treating the public fairly, commercial Advertising has, by degrees, established for itself a position from which it is unlikely to be dislodged. That the Advertising of the future will resemble in its outward manifestations that of the present day is extremely improbable. Dr. Johnson thought that Advertising had, in his own day, reached such perfection that improvement was hardly possible. Had Dr. Johnson been an advertising-man, he might have been humbler * Some details of Mr. Hooper's book-advertising enterprises are given in the sixth Lecture. Vide infra, p. 217 et seq. INTRODUCTION 29 in his expectations ; perhaps he would have been less severe in his criticisms.^ There is no doubt in my own mind about the direction in which improvement will be achieved. Looking backward to 1850, or thereabouts, one sees that violent displays of different kinds gradually gave place to more restrained topography, ugliness being abandoned as a method of attracting attention, for elegance and even beauty. It is to be remarked that prejudices die extremely hard. Because there was a great deal of dishonest advertising in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries people still retain a certain distrust of statements in an advertisement. Because advertisements in the Vic- torian period were seldom good to look at, the word ' hideous ' attaches itself mechanically to the word * advertisement ' like the characteristic adjectives of the Roman poets, to whom -^neas was always pius and Achates fidus. It can no more shake off its conventional epithet than they. A comparison of the advertisements in a news- paper or periodical of to-day with those half a century ago will show great improvement, but the greatest improvement has been in posters. The advertising value of the poster is greatly under-estimated at the present time. Relatively few advertisers have ever used posters at all. They are by far the cheapest medium of publicity. The comparative expense of the same predominance among large advertisers 1 ' Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very neghgently perused, and it is therefore becoming necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick. Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. I remember a washball that had a quality truly wonderful — it gave an exquisite edge to the razor ! The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement.' — rA# /