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 method 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 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 text­book for stu­dents and a safe guide for adver­tis­ers. Every state­ment has been weighed. The book is con­fined to estab­lish 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 the 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 polices. They become a clear­ing­house 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 ad 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 tech­niques. There is that tech­nique 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 unto 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, quite 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 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.

The 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 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 has 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 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, a 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 of 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 ground­work 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. Thou­sand 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.

About the Author

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