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Scientific Advertising
In This Book
I. How Advertising Laws Are Established II. Just Salesmanship
III. Offer Service IV. Mail Order Advertising--What It Teaches V.
Headlines VI. Psychology VII. Being Specific VIII. Tell Your
Full Story IX. Art in Advertising X. Things Too Costly XI.
Information XII. Strategy XIII. Use of Samples XIV. Getting
Distribution XV. Test Campaigns XVI. Leaning on Dealers XVII.
Individuality XVIII. Negative Advertising XIX. Letter Writing XX.
A Name That Helps XXI. Good Business
CHAPTER ONE
How Advertising Laws Are Established
The time has come when advertising has in some hands reached the
status of a science. It is based on fixed principles and is reasonably
exact. The causes and effects have been analyzed until they are well
understood. The correct methods of procedure have been proved and
established. We know what is most effective, and we act on basic laws.
Advertising, once a gamble, has thus become, under able direction, one
of the safest of business ventures. Certainly no other enterprise with
comparable possibilities need involve so little risk.
Therefore this book deals, not with theories and opinions, but with
well-proved principles and facts. It is written as a text book for
students and a safe guide for advertisers. Every statement has been
weighed. The book is confined to established fundamentals. If we enter
any realms of uncertainty we shall carefully denote them.
The present status of advertising is due to many reasons. Much
national advertising has long been handled by large organizations
known as advertising agencies. Some of these agencies, in their
hundreds of campaigns, have tested and compared thousands of plans and
ideas. The results have been watched and recorded, so no lessons have
been lost.
Such agencies employ a high grade of talent. None but able and
experienced men can meet the requirements in national advertising.
Working in co-operation, learning from each other and from each new
undertaking, some of these men develop into masters.
Individuals may come and go, but they leave their records and ideas
behind them. These become a part of the organization's equipment, and
a guide to all who follow. Thus, in the course of decades, such
agencies become storehouses of advertising experiences, proved
principles, and methods.
The larger agencies also come into intimate contact with experts in
every department of business. Their clients are usually dominating
concerns. So they see the results of countless methods and policies.
They become a clearing house for everything pertaining to
merchandising. Nearly every selling question which arises in business
is accurately answered by many experiences.
Under these conditions, where they long exist, advertising and
merchandising become exact sciences. Every course is charted. The
compass of accurate knowledge directs the shortest, safest, cheapest
course to any destination.
We learn the principles and prove them by repeated tests. This is done
through keyed advertising, by traced returns, largely by the use of
coupons. We compare one way with many others, backward and forward,
and record the results. When one method invariably proves best, that
method becomes a fixed principle.
Mail order advertising is traced down to the fraction of a penny. The
cost per reply and cost per dollar of sale show up with utter
exactness.
One ad is compared with another, one method with another. Headlines,
settings, sizes, arguments and pictures are compared. To reduce the
cost of results even one per cent means much in some mail order
advertising. So no guesswork is permitted. One must know what is best.
Thus mail order advertising first established many of our basic laws.
In lines where direct returns are impossible we compare one town with
another. Scores of methods may be compared in this way, measured by
cost of sales.
But the most common way is by use of the coupon. We offer a sample, a
book, a free package or something to induce direct replies. Thus we
learn the amount of action which each ad engenders.
But those figures are not final. One ad may bring too many worthless
replies, another replies that are valuable. So our final conclusions
are always based on cost per customer or cost per dollar of sale.
These coupon plans are dealt with further in the chapter on "Test
Campaigns." Here we explain only how we employ them to discover
advertising principles.
In a large agency coupon returns are watched and recorded on hundreds
of different lines. In a single line they are sometimes recorded on
thousands of separate ads. Thus we test everything pertaining to
advertising. We answer nearly every possible question by multitudinous
traced returns.
Some things we learn in this way apply only to particular lines. But
even those supply basic principles for analogous undertakings.
Others apply to all lines. They become fundamentals for advertising in
general. They are universally applied. No wise advertiser will ever
depart from those unvarying laws.
We propose in this book to deal with those fundamentals, those
universal principles. To teach only established technic. There is that
technic in advertising, as in all art, science and mechanics. And it
is, as in all lines, a basic essential.
The lack of those fundamentals has been the main trouble with
advertising of the past. Each worker was a law to himself. All
previous knowledge, all progress in the line, was a closed book to
him. It was like a man trying to build a modern locomotive without
first ascertaining what others had done. It was like a Columbus
starting out to find an undiscovered land.
Men were guided by whims and fancies--vagrant, changing breezes. They
rarely arrived at their port. When they did--by accident--it was by a
long roundabout course.
Each early mariner in this sea mapped his own separate course. There
were no charts to guide him. Not a lighthouse marked a harbor, not a
buoy showed a reef. The wrecks were unrecorded, so countless ventures
came to grief on the same rocks and shoals.
Advertising was then a gamble--a speculation of the rashest sort. One
man's guess on the proper course was as likely to be as good as
another's. There were no safe pilots, because few sailed the same
course twice.
That condition has been corrected. Now the only uncertainties pertain
to people and to products, not to methods. It is hard to measure human
idiosyncrasies, the preferences and prejudices, the likes and dislikes
that exist. We cannot say that an article will be popular, but we know
how to find out very quickly. We do know how to sell it in the most
effective way.
Ventures may fail, but the failures are not disasters. Losses, when
they occur, are but trifling. And the causes are factors which have
nothing to do with the advertising.
Advertising has flourished under these new conditions. It has
multiplied in volume, in prestige and respect. The perils have been
almost eliminated. The results have increased many fold. Just because
the gamble has become a science, the speculation a very conservative
business.
These facts should be recognized by all. This is no proper field for
sophistry or theory, or for any other will-o'-the-wisp. The blind
leading the blind is ridiculous. It is pitiful in a field with such
vast possibilities. Success is a rarity, maximum success an
impossibility, unless one is guided by laws as immutable as the law of
gravitation.
So our main purpose here is to set down those laws, and to tell you
how to prove them for yourself. After them come a myriad variations.
No two advertising campaigns are ever conducted on lines that are
identical. Individuality is an essential. Imitation is a reproach. But
those variable things which depend on ingenuity have no place in a
text book on advertising. This is for ground-work only.
Our hope is to foster advertising through a better understanding. To
place it on a business basis. To have it recognized as among the
safest, surest ventures which lead to large returns.
Thousands of conspicuous successes show its possibilities. Their
variety points out its almost unlimited scope. Yet thousands who need
it--who can never attain their deserts without it--still look upon its
accomplishments as somewhat accidental.
That was so, but it is not so now. We hope that this book will throw
some new lights on the subject.