Almost any ques­tion can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test cam­paign. And that’s the way to answer them — not by argu­ments around a table. Go to the court of last resort — the buy­ers of your product.

On every new project there comes up the ques­tion of sell­ing that arti­cle prof­itably. You and your friends may like it, but the major­ity may not. Some rival prod­uct may be bet­ter liked or cheaper. It may be strongly entrenched. The users won away from it may cost too much to get.

Peo­ple may buy and not repeat. The arti­cle may last too long. It may appeal to a small per­cent­age, so most of your adver­tis­ing goes to waste.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Most adver­tis­ers are con­fronted with the prob­lem of get­ting dis­tri­b­u­tion. National adver­tis­ing is unthink­able with­out that. A ven­ture can­not be prof­itable if nine in ten of the con­verts fail to find the goods.

To force deal­ers to stock by bring­ing repeated demands may be enor­mously expen­sive. To cover the coun­try with a sell­ing force is usu­ally impos­si­ble. To get deal­ers to stock an unknown line on promise of adver­tis­ing is not easy. They have seen too many efforts fail, too many promises rescinded.

We can­not dis­cuss all plans for get­ting dis­tri­b­u­tion. There are scores of ways employed, accord­ing to the enter­prise. Some start by solic­it­ing direct sales — mail orders — until the vol­ume of demand forces deal­ers to supply.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

The prod­uct itself should be its own best sales­man. Not the prod­uct alone, but the prod­uct plus a men­tal impres­sion, and atmos­phere, which you place around it. That being so, sam­ples are of prime impor­tance. How­ever expen­sive, they usu­ally form the cheap­est sell­ing method. A sales­man might as well go out with­out his sam­ple case as an advertiser.

Sam­pling does not apply to lit­tle things alone, like foods or pro­pri­etaries. It can be applied in some way to almost every thing. We have sam­pled cloth­ing. We are now sam­pling phono­graph records.

Sam­ples serve numer­ous valu­able pur­poses. They enable one to use the word “Free” in ads. That often mul­ti­plies read­ers. Most peo­ple want to learn about any offered gift. Tests often show that sam­ples pay for them­selves — per­haps sev­eral times over — in mul­ti­ply­ing the read­ers of your ads with­out addi­tional cost of space.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Pic­tures in adver­tis­ing are very expen­sive. Not in cost of good art work alone, but in the cost of space. From one-​​third to one-​​half of an adver­tis­ing cam­paign is often staked on the power of the pic­tures. Any­thing expen­sive must be effec­tive, else it involves much waste. So art in adver­tis­ing is a study of para­mount importance.

Pic­tures should not be used merely because they are inter­est­ing. Or to attract atten­tion. Or to dec­o­rate an ad. We have cov­ered these points else­where. Ads are not writ­ten to inter­est, please or amuse. You are not writ­ing to please the hoi-​​polloi. You are writ­ing on a seri­ous sub­ject — the sub­ject of money spend­ing. And you address a restricted minority.

Use pic­tures only to attract those who may profit you. Use them only when they form a bet­ter sell­ing argu­ment than the same amount of space set in type.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

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.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Ryan Healy, a tal­ented copy­writer whose blog I love read­ing, recently said that copy­writ­ers shouldn’t be cheap, espe­cially when they start out.

It’s a pow­er­ful notion, because many begin­ning copy­writ­ers believe that being cheap will get them more busi­ness. (There are other ways around this, of course. Know­ing how to mar­ket your­self is one thing. Focus­ing on a spe­cialty, a niche, is another. But more on that at another time.)

The bot­tom line is, if you low­ball your rates, you will not get as much busi­ness as you think you’ll get. Sure, you will prob­a­bly get some. But it’s the kind of busi­ness you don’t want.

Read the rest of this post or share it »