The

J. W. T.
Book

A Series of
Talks on Advertising

Published by
J. Walter Thompson Co.
New York

Established 1864
J. Walter Thompson Co.
(Incorporated)
 2

All human effort is the result of Ideas set in motion.

The quality of the product corresponds exactly to the
character of the Ideas that produce it.

That is the reason why some advertising is so poor

that it is a waste of good white space; and why other
advertising is so effective that the cost of the space it
occupies is mere pin-money compared to its results.

Good advertising always has an Idea for a foundation.

It is in accord with the fundamental facts of life. It is a
product of Personality, but the Personality must be pretty
well developed.

Weak advertising, on the other hand, is generally

without Ideas—or a definite plan. It is simply an
ineffectual swishing around on the surface of things.

Forty-four years of experience in conducting

advertising campaigns of every description have
convinced us that good publicity, in all its phases, must
be based on a few broad principles of human nature.

It has occurred to us that in these general basic ideas

lies the whole philosophy, or science, or art of
advertising.

In this little book we have jotted down some of these

fundamental principles, as we see them. It is not a
manual of instruction, but a book of observation and
reflection.

This series of talks on advertising is necessarily

incomplete, for we are not authors but doers, and we lack
the time to cover a subject as wide and big as advertising
in its various aspects.

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 3

The American Public

Every American is potentially a live wire. He lives in an
atmosphere of action. He is always looking for new ideas;
he appreciates improvements and inventions; he
understands the value of time, and of taking short cuts to
get what he wants.

You don‟t have to convince the average American to

sell him your goods. You have only to half-convince him,
and he does the rest.

If this were not so, advertising would be limited to the

promotion of a few staple and necessary articles like
sugar, and flour and soap—with which everybody is
familiar. A man in Arizona, who has never seen a safety
razor in his life, reads your advertisement and buys one
by mail.

In your single page story you have not described your

safety razor, though you may think you have. The Patent
Office would require at least three pages of description
with diagrams.

But you have given a general idea of the thing, and

have told what it is used for. An intelligence in Arizona
has filled in the gaps—and has taken your razor on faith.

The vivid imagination of the American public is in the

background of every story of successful advertising.

Every American doesn‟t expect to be the President of

the United States, or to make a million dollars. But few
men look forward to being factory hands, or clerks, or
plowmen, or bookkeepers, all their lives.

The average American is so afraid that an opportunity

will get by him without being recognized that he loses
sleep over it. That state of mind is responsible for the
keenness of perception, and the quickness of thought and
speech, that are so noticeable to an intelligent foreigner
as soon as he lands in America.

An advertising idea projected into the hum and stir of

American life finds a million receptive minds. If it is not a
success, it is the advertiser‟s fault—not the public‟s.

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 4

It is different in Europe. There the social and economic

life of the people has crystallized into rigid forms.

If, in your globetrotting, you should meet a European

peasant in the road and talk to him you will find that he
knows little or nothing. He wears sabots that he whittled
out himself, and his jacket was made by his wife.

Even his furniture is home made, and his farm tools

are the product of the village blacksmith shop. He reads
no books or newspapers, and he is not a buyer. He is
picturesque, and that is all.

But the American farmer—and this applies to the

American workman as well—can discuss the questions of
the day with commonsense and comprehension. His
shoes are factory-made; he wears a suit of store-clothes;
and in his home you will find Grand Rapids furniture, and
often a piano.

He buys factory-made goods because he values his

own time, and he knows that it is cheaper to buy things
ready-made than to make them at home.

Americans are producers and spenders.

The only money that counts is the money that

circulates.

Statistics show that France has a larger ready money

capital than any other nation. But money in France is
hard to find, for it is tied up in many millions of tight
wads in the toes of antique stockings. It might as well be
in the bottom of the Mediterranean for the good it does
French merchants.

The French peasant‟s well-being doesn‟t result from

his being a big producer, for his individual production is
small. But he is encrusted with a tradition of stinginess,
and he saves all he makes. The result is that the
atmosphere of France is about as favorable to advertising
as the soil of Lapland is to the raising of orchids.

America is the advertiser‟s Promised Land, turned into

a reality.

It is an impressive thought that the vast fabric of

American publicity, woven into the flesh and bones of
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 5

commercial life, has grown into being in less than a

lifetime.

This could not have been unless advertising, from its

inception, had met with a tremendous popular response.

Advertising is revolutionary. Its tendency is to

overturn preconceived notions, to set new ideas spinning
through the reader‟s brain, to induce people to do
something that they never did before. It is a form of
progress, and it interests only progressive people. That‟s
why it thrives in America as in no other land under the
sun.

Stupid people are not much impressed by advertising.

They move in a rut of tradition.

When one of the most successful men in America was

asked by the writer to tell—for publication—how he had
made a fortune, his reply was: “By having nothing to do
with fools. I‟ve made it a rule never to deal with a man
unless he was as bright as a dollar.”

A man with a painful case of toothache is likely to go

about with a long face and a self-pitying expression. But
if he should be so unfortunate as to break his leg, or be
laid up several months with a complication of typhoid
fever and Brights disease, he will look back upon the
toothache as a pleasant memory.

The United States has just recovered from a slight

attack of toothache. We allow ourselves to think that we
have had a hard time of it, but that is because we have
never been affected with anything worse than a few
juvenile complaints.

Talk about hard times! Our little financial chill would

look like the hectic flush of prosperity in Europe.

In England and Wales there were 810,000 persons in

need of public relief in 1903. This was a normal year. In
1908, at least twice that many were paupers or persons
on the verge of pauperism. This in a population of forty
millions.

In 1908, the savings banks of the United States

contained more than $3,600,000,000. The average
deposit was $420.47. Great Britain, with half the
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 6

population, showed a total of savings less than thirty per

cent of that of the United States (the figures were
$1,020,271.823), and the average English deposit was
only $81.81.

In eight years (from 1900 to 1908) the deposits in

American savings banks grew from $2,449,547,885 to
$3,660,553,945—an increase of nearly 50 per-cent—while
the number of depositors increased from 6,107,083 to
8,705,848.

The life insurance in force in the United States

amounts to about $22 billion. Contrasted with this
gigantic total is the $4,344,000,000 worth of policies
carried by the inhabitants of Great Britain;
$1,320,000,000 in force in Germany; and $720,000,000
in force in France. In other words, the American people
carry three and one-half times as much life insurance as
Great Britain, Germany and France combined.

There are 194,000 square miles of coal fields within

the limits of the United States; all Europe has only 44,000
square miles.

The workers in manufacturing establishments in the

United States in 1900 were enumerated at 4,715,022, to
whom wages amounting annually to $2,009,735,799 were
paid.

Five years later the number of employees had

increased to 5,470,000 and their wages to
$2,611,540,532.

Increase in employees—16 percent. Increase in

wages—30 percent.

It is true that the cost of living has risen, but statistics

show with mathematical accuracy that the increase in
wages has far outstripped the rise in prices.

Standard commodities that could be bought for

$91.41 in 1900 had risen to $98.31 in 1905—an increase
of nearly eight percent. But the figures given above show
that wages had increased 30 percent during the same
period, while the number of workers among whom the
wages had to be divided had increased only 16 percent.

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 7

The growth in manufacturing enterprises during the

last 30 years has been enormous, but, in the face of that
fact, the United States is still an agricultural nation.

The persons actually engaged in agriculture in 1900

(not counting farmers‟ wives and non-working members
of farmers‟ families) amounted to 10,381,000. They
occupied 5,737,000 farms, valued at more than $20
billions.

The average area of the American farm is 146 acres.

Compare this with the wretched little patch on which the
European farmer makes his living and saves money, and
you can understand why the American is an inexhaustible
buyer.

The balance of foreign trade has been very largely in

our favor for a number of years. For the year ending
June30, 1908, for example, we exported $1,834,786,357
worth of domestic merchandise. During the same period
we received $1,194,341,792 worth of imports. Balance in
favor of the United States—$640,444,565.

Of our exports $400,000,000 consisted of raw cotton,

a product of which the United States holds what is
practically a world monopoly. Among the exports were
$184,000,000 worth of iron and steel; $104,000,000
worth of copper; and $198,000,000 worth of breadstuffs
(wheat, flour, oats and corn).

We produce about one-fourth of the world‟s total

production of gold, and more than one-third of the world‟s
supply of silver.

Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan says that when he was a young

man his father told him that any man who was a bear on
the continued prosperity of the American people would
eventually go broke. The Morgan fortune is founded on
the belief that the country will always keep moving
ahead. It‟s a good belief for an advertiser.

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 8

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
The advertising agent‟s relation to his client is a
personal relation.

To an advertiser the agent occupies the same relative

position as a lawyer to his client. He is—or ought to be—a
confidential adviser in everything that concerns sales and
publicity.

No advertising agency can turn itself into a factory, or

a slot machine, and still continue to give efficient service.
Personal Service has been the mainspring of the J. Walter
Thompson agency for 44 years.

There is no divided responsibility in this agency, for

what is everybody‟s business is no-body‟s business.

Every client looks to one man in our organization, and

this man is in every case an experienced, trained and
skilled advertising man. The agency holds him responsible
for the success of the client‟s publicity.

Behind the man who constantly looks after your

interests, there are the complete resources and
equipment of the organization, with its accumulated
experience, and its efficient copy and art departments.

The result is that each client receives the benefit of

personal attention, combined with the co-operation of a
large and highly trained organization.

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 9

The Hold on Your Trade

The writer of this booklet once spent a day in a
Carolina mill town, built around a cotton factory that gave
employment to six hundred hands, and turned out forty
thousand yards of cheap cotton a day.

It was an animated little village, where everybody

worked, and where every storekeeper knew that some of
the next Saturday‟s payroll would come his way.

This community, a year later, looked as dead as

Goldsmith‟s “Deserted Village.” The factory was silent,
most of the stores were closed, and little knots of
dejected men hung round the grass-grown streets.

For years this mill had sent every yard of its product
to China. But the day came when American goods were
boycotted by two or three powerful Chinese guilds, and
this prosperous American enterprise stopped with the
suddenness of an ocean liner striking an iceberg. It took a
long time to find another profitable market, and, in the
meantime, the costly plant stood idle, eating its head off
in interest and expenses.

This concern had paid dividends for years, and its

stockholders thought it was doing great things, but it
never had any real hold on its trade.

A few hundred gaudy placards—looking like

transfigured laundry tickets—posted in the cluttered
streets of Shanghai, pulled it up with a jerk.

Thousands of American manufacturers, making every

sort of thing from tooth-brushes to passenger elevators,
and who never sent a dollar‟s worth of goods to China in
their lives, are in the same general situation as this
Southern cotton mill was before the typhoon hit it.

The manufacturer who never advertises his product to

the consumer is at the mercy of the jobber and the
retailer. His name seldom—or never—reaches the men
and women who buy his goods. Cut-throat competition,
that shaves the lowest margin of profits to nothing at all,
can destroy his business in a single year.

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 10

This is no fine-spun theory. It is a condition—and

every manufacturer who reds this knows that it is so.
But there is a remedy.

And the remedy is advertising.

A million people asking persistently for your hosiery,

or your lead-pencils, or your soap, will scare any
combination of ill-disposed jobbers and retailers to death.
Advertising creates a sympathy between the make and
the user that becomes, in time, the most valuable asset
that any manufacturer can acquire.

The Royal Baking Powder Company has half a dozen

plants, with a capital stock of $20,000,000.

If every one of its plants were burned down today,

without insurance, do you suppose the Royal Baking
Powder Company would be ruined?

Of course it wouldn‟t. The biggest asset this Company

possesses cannot be touched by fire. Advertising, which
has planted a knowledge of Royal Baking Powder in the
minds of millions of women, has created an asset of
public confidence worth many millions of dollars.

A manufacturing plant without business is not an

asset, but a liability—and the only kind of business that
has much permanent value in the kind that comes from a
public demand for your particular brand of goods.

There are many manufacturers who do not advertise

because they do not understand advertising. They know
that it means an outlay of money, but the results seem to
them too far away, too uncertain and too intangible for
conservative business.

If you are wavering in the borderland of doubt and

decision, we want you to devote a quarter of an hour to a
quiet consideration of these points:

1st. If advertising were not a practical and highly

efficient method of building trade, do you suppose hard-
headed American merchants and manufacturers would
invest several hundred millions of dollars every year in
advertising space? Look through any standard magazine
or large daily newspaper, and make a note of the names

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 11

of the advertisers. Then turn to these names in Dun or

Bradstreet. Almost all of them have first-class ratings.

They are substantial concerns.

2nd. Observe that the great majority of periodicals

and newspapers print more advertising than reading
matter. They do this year after year. Somebody pays for
it, and finds it profitable, or it wouldn‟t be continued.

3rd. An expenditure of money is required for

advertising, but an expenditure is required for anything
that is worth doing, from having your windows washed to
buying your stock of goods for next season. You need not
necessarily begin your advertising with an appropriation
so big that you have to mortgage your plant to raise it.

Most big and successful advertisers started their

publicity with small and careful expenditures. Advertising
has the peculiar quality of being adjustable in
circumstances. You can spend a thousand dollars a month
or a hundred thousand, and make it profitable in either
case.

4th. Any businessman can understand the whole

advertising situation in an hour. To understand it, you
don‟t have to acquire a technical knowledge of type, cuts
and rates per line. Your advertising agent will attend to
the details.

5th. Don‟t fall into the mistake of believing that the

results of advertising are far-off and visionary. On the
contrary, it is the most rapid method of selling ever
devised. By means of publicity, you can cover the country
in a month.

Conservatism is a much-abused word. It really means

the quality that keeps men out of foolish enterprises. But
in the course of time it has become a synonym for
stagnation, and no enterprise, however rash, is quite as
silly as sitting in one place and doing nothing till you dry
up and go to seed. The conservative worships the god of
things as they are, which would be all very well, if things
would only stand still.

Then he that had received the five talents went and

traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

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 12

And likewise he that had received two, he also gained

other two.

But he that had received one went and digged in the

earth, and hid his lord‟s money.

After a long time the lord of these servants cometh

and reckoneth with them.

And so he that had received five talents came and

brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst
unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them
five talents more.

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and
faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things,
I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into
the joy of thy lord.

He also that had received two talents came and said,

Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I
have gained two other talents besides them.

His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful
servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will
make thee ruler over may things: enter thou into the joy
of the lord.

The he which had received the one talent came and

said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping
where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast
not strewed:

And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the
earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and
slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed
not, and gather where I have not strewed:

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the

exchangers, and then at my coming I should have
received mine own with usury.

Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto

him which has ten talents.

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 13

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he

shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall
be taken away even that which he hath. Matt. 25:16-29.

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 14

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
Advertising raises the advertised commodity above
competition.

Manufacturers whose products have been thoroughly

advertised never feel that full effect of general financial
depressions.

We want every manufacturer who reads this to fee

that it applies to HIM—because it does.

No investment can be more important to a

manufacturer than the money invested in sales
promotion, for upon sales the entire life of the business
depends.

The J. Walter Company wants to meet manufacturers

who feel that they are not getting all the business that
should come their way.

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 15

The Advertising Plan

The ability to plan is an evidence of intellectual
growth. The half naked savage lives in an atmosphere of
sheer Luck. Today he gorges like a boa constrictor, and
for the next month he will starve like a dieting patient.
Having no purpose in life, he roams from one camping
ground to another, and his days are filled with casual
happenings.

But Civilization—which is only a plan of social and

economic life—turns man‟s energy into definite channels
of purpose.

The chief work of civilization is to eliminate Chance,

and that can be done only by foreseeing and planning.
A plan is not only a symptom of intellectual activity; it is
typical of man‟s civilized life.

Anything without a plan somewhere behind it is as

much out of place in the modern world as big chief Sitting
Bull would be at a meeting of the American Mathematical
Association.

Advertising is not an exception.

The advertising campaigns that win are those that are

based on carefully matured ideas, developed at every
point into a harmonious plan.

Haphazard advertising—which means an

advertisement printed here and there, according to whim
or impulse—never has paid, and never will pay.

Our forty-four years of observation have taught us

nothing with more force and clearness than this.

Planning an advertising campaign is a form of

strategy. The man who does it ought to know how to
bring his advertising to bear on the public‟s most
vulnerable point.

He ought to know how to use the full strength of his

argument without waste of effort; and he ought to know
how to make every dollar count. Without experience that
cannot be done any better than a raw recruit could have
planned Napoleon‟s campaign of Austerlitz.

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 16

The success of an advertising campaign is almost

always in direct ratio to the sum total of the organized
experience behind it.

Under the competitive system of industry the chief

requisite to success is the ability to get the highest
percentage of efficiency out of a dollar.

The modern science of business is a science of short

cuts. The manufacturer, who is able to make every dollar
of his expenditure for raw materials, or for labor, produce
more than the other fellow‟s dollar, has a tremendous
advantage over his competitor.

A plan of publicity, to develop the maximum dollar-

efficiency of an advertising appropriation, must rest upon
the following conditions:

1st. A useful article at the right price.

2nd. An investment proportionate to the result

desired.

3rd. A knowledge of trade conditions and methods.

4th. Study of the article to be advertised, with the

idea of determining its selling points.

5th. Selection of the proper advertising media.

6th. Determination of the right time to advertise.

7th. Good copy.

8th. Cooperation with the advertiser in the formation

of a complete sales plan, which includes the best
means of distribution and the instruction of salesmen.

The function of an advertising agency is to consider

these points and work them into an effective campaign.

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 17

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
We don‟t believe there is anything more essential to
an advertiser‟s success than an effective plan of
campaign.

In the creation of effective plans the J. Walter

Thompson Company is prepared to give advertisers a
service of the highest value.

We have conducted hundreds of advertising

campaigns, the mere mention of which would fill pages of
this book.

All the experience we have acquired is in such shape

that it can be utilized at short notice.

We make money for the advertiser from the start by

devising—with his cooperation—a plan based on long
experience and practical knowledge.

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 18

Salesmanship
The purpose of advertising is to sell goods to people
living at a distance. No matter whether the “distance” is
one block or ten thousand miles, the principle is the
same.

An article may be sold across a counter or across an

ocean, but in either case it takes salesmanship to sell it.
Salesmanship is the heart and the brain of advertising.
Without it advertising is as dead as the Bartholdi statue—
fine to look at, but hollow inside.

To write good advertising one must be a sales-man by

instinct or by training. If the advertising writer has a
college education, and knows books and all the fine points
of English grammar, so much the better; but the
salesman in him must be crowding out the scholar all the
time.

An artist sees nothing in advertising but pretty

pictures. That‟s his business. On the other hand, a literary
man doesn‟t care so much about the pictures, because
they take up too much space, which might as well be
filled with words.

If the artist and the literary man are allowed to

collaborate they will produce something that may look
pretty and sound well—but in nine cases out of ten it will
not have very much to do with selling goods.

A real advertisement has FORCE behind it. The whole

idea of advertising is to make the reader want to buy.

What constitutes salesmanship in an advertisement?

Is it strong, forceful talk on the usefulness of the

article advertised? Or is it a talk on values and prices? Or
is it a hurry-up, “limited-offer, act now,” call to buy? Or is
it the kind of argument that a Coney Island barker shouts
through a megaphone?

An advertisement may have any one of these

qualities, or as many of them combined as compatibility
will allow, and yet fall far short of possessing
salesmanship.

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 19

Salesmanship is the psychic element of advertising. It

is as hard to describe it as it is to put in words the
penetrating charm of Giovanni Bellini‟s “Madonna and
Child” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That picture is as simple as a photograph of Uncle

John, and it has defects that an art have stood before it a
moment you realize student would be ashamed of, but
when you that it is one of the great paintings of the
world.

Shakespeare was the most powerful dramatist that

has ever lived, but he borrowed his plots right and left
and his staging is so crude that his plays have to be
turned all around before they are presented at a modern
theatre. But an idea lives in every play—a great thought
that goes straight in the hearts of men.

A good advertisement is like that. It goes into the

reader‟s circle of ideas like a burglar drilling into a safe.

Edward W. Bok says that he has edited the Ladies‟

Home Journal for the last eighteen years for one woman,
and the woman isn‟t a composite of various individuals,
as one would naturally think. She is a real, live
personality. Mr. Bok says he has never met her.

About eighteen years ago Mr. Bok and Mr. Curtis

made a tour of the smaller cities of the country. In one
place Mr. Bok says he saw a woman at a concert and,
later, at a church, who seemed by her appearance and
manner to be a typical American woman. He learned her
name and where she lived, and went by her house to look
at it.

From that day to this he has kept this woman in mind.

The Ladies‟ Home Journal is edited for her.

Two or three years after he saw her, Mr. Bok found

her name on the subscription list of the Ladies‟ Home
Journal, and a few years ago she wrote a letter to the
editor to tell him how much she appreciated the
magazine.

Puffing the selling quality in advertising is like putting

personality and life into a magazine. It can‟t be done
unless you make your advertisement talk to somebody or
other—to some definite personality— not to the air. But
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 20

the person you have in mind must be typical of a large

class of people.

The trouble with lots of advertising is that it is directed

at nobody at all. It is simply words, written and printed,
but not convincing, because it is not intended for anybody
in particular.

Every merchant sees lots of traveling salesmen, and in

time he subconsciously classifies them into general types.
One of these classifications is represented by the Long-
Faced Man, who comes into your store in a stodgy,
perfunctory way, as if solely from a sense of duty. He is a
cold, fishy sort of proposition.

If he stays with you long enough, you begin to feel

that our financial crisis is not over yet, and that
retrenchment is absolutely necessary.

In almost every periodical you will find the counterpart

of Mr. Long Face in some cold and weary string of words
that is called advertising because it is paid for and
appears in the advertising section.

Then there is the salesman who knows it all. His

attitude expresses a half-concealed pity for your
ignorance. He has traveled far and wide, knows all the
celebrities and heavyweight personages. His talk is mainly
about himself, and the amount of money he can make
and spend. He knows you are a fool, but is polite enough
not to tell you so.

Mr. Know-it-all is well represented in the advertising

pages, and his advertising gives on paper about the same
line of conversation he will give you to your face.

Another specimen in the merchant‟s museum of

memory is the Stingy Fellow. He gives a dime to the boy
who brings his grips, when a quarter is the right reward.

The hotels charge outrageously, he will explain to you

presently, and all cabmen are pirates. If you warm up and
get friendly with him he will probably show you how he
has saved three-fourths of his salary for the past ten
years by means of systematic stinginess, which he calls a
“plan of saving.”

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 21

He is more than likely to represent some price-cutting

concern that is making a cheaper line of goods than its
competitors.

This gentleman reminds one of a small and miserably

crowded advertisement, in which a mil-lion dollar story is
told in a twenty-five dollar space.

Another type is the Pretty Man, who stops at the

mirror by the door to adjust his toilette before he comes
in; who is a “glass of fashion and a mold of form,” who is
afraid his trousers will lose their crease when he sits
down; and who has to rush off to have his nails
manicured before train time.

You just can‟t help thinking of him when you look over
the advertising pages. He is there, with all his cousins and
nephews. In advertising, his chief aim in life is to turn the
advertising section into a cheap, half-tone picture gallery.
None of these fellows is a salesman.

They are only make-believe. But here comes the real

thing.

When the real salesman enters, you know it as soon

as you see him. He looks the part. He dismisses the boy
with fifty cents instead of a quarter, and while you know
it is a waste of money, you feel that he is too big and
broad to care about such a trifle.

He knows all about his goods, and his talk is very

much to the point. You are stirred by his ideas and
suggestions. He enlarges your mental horizon, and you
see new and big possibilities.

Your advertising, to reach the highest efficiency,

ought to have this salesman‟s personality, worked into
type and paper.

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 22

J. Walter Thompson Company

Chain of Offices

The J. W. T. Service
The J. Walter Thompson Company has operating
offices in six cities with a complete personnel and
equipment at each office. Salesmanship

This distribution of branch offices in the centers from

which advertising originates, places the J. W. T. Service
within easy reaching distance of three-fourths of the
national advertisers in America.

Personal contact is essential to the discussion of the

complex problems of publicity—that is, it is essential if
the discussion is expected to bring forth anything worth-
while.

In thinking of the J. Walter Thompson Company one

fact should stand out on the horizon of consideration like
a sky-scraper in a village of wooden shanties—and that
is: This agency is not a machine, but an organization of
advertising men.

If we were running an advertising machine, our

business with you could be carried on by typewritten
letters, dictated by a clerk. But being men, accustomed to
meeting people, we had rather talk than write. That‟s why
we have a chain of offices. We want to be in constant
personal touch with our clients.

All J. W. T. Men Are Picked Men

Every one of the hundred or more men doing
important creative work in this organization is capable of
conducting an advertising agency.

They would not be here if they did not possess a well-

rounded knowledge of advertising, gained by years of
experience. When your product consists of Service—and
that is all any advertising agency has to offer—its quality
depends entirely on the human factor.

J. W. T. men are large-caliber men, selected from the

entire advertising field. They are trained to act together;

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 23

to cooperate among themselves, and to cooperate with

our clients.

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
The J. Walter Thompson Company is an organization
of salesmen who use advertising as a means of
expression.
The advertising done by us for our clients is based, in
plan and in details, upon the principles of salesmanship.

We have studied trade conditions for forty years, and

are adding to our knowledge every day, as new lines of
activity are opened to American advertisers.

We can often save the new advertiser from the costly

mistakes of inexperience—for we know what has paid and
what has failed to pay.

We do not attempt to dominate the advertiser: we

cooperate with him.

Our sales plans are not ready made, nor are they
worked out in visionary, highfaluting schemes. They stand
upon the practical basis of experience and common
sense.

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 24

Good Copy
Advertising is simply news about goods for sale, but
news saturated with selling force. A good advertisement
always means more than it says, while a poor
advertisement says more than it means.

Any man who can write a hundred wards about an

article of utility in such a way that the reader will think a
thousand words, has the right kind of mental make-up to
write good advertising.

A good advertisement stimulates the reader‟s

imagination; it presents commonplace facts in an
attractive light; it throws the glamour of a new interest
around things that are as old as the hills. In that way
advertising is a marvelously effective public educator.

The influence of advertising has penetrated into every

stratum of American life. It is hardly conceivable that
there is a borne in the United States where people read
the English language that has not been affected by
advertising in some manner or degree.

The effect of advertising upon the public mind is

educational and elevating. It describes comforts and
luxuries and creates a desire for them. It raises the
intellectual level by raising the standard of living.

The only reason that anything becomes common place

is because we see it so often. It is said that people living
in sight of Pike‟s Peak grow so accustomed to that
gigantic shoulder of stone standing against the sky that
they do not pay any more attention to it than they do to a
pebble in the backyard.

But nothing should be commonplace to the writer of

advertising. You don‟t have to look up to the stars to see
wonders; we live in the midst of them.

Here is a pair of shoes. It has taken mankind several

thousand years to acquire enough knowledge to construct
a modem shoe. Behind the result that stands before you
stretches the long vista of obscure inventors; the
laborious perfecting of machinery; the slowly acquired
skill in designing; the tanning and curing of hides; and
the developed ability to, coordinate several hundred
detailed operations into a single product.
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 25

A shoe is a miracle of manufacturing. That it does not

sell for thirty-five dollars instead of three dollars and a
half is an impressive tribute to the skill of labor.

Instead of a scarcity of material for the writing of

advertising, there is too much material, too many facts,
too many ideas, about every commodity under the sun.

The advertising writer finds himself obliged to select

one or more distinctive features and eliminate the rest.
Poor judgment in picking out the distinctive features often
turns what would naturally be a good advertisement into
a very poor one.

The distinctive features of any article are its selling

points. Around them the advertising ought to be written.

Advertising is a product of personality. It is distinctly

characteristic of the man who writes it. Whatever you
produce comes from within you. Studying an article to be
advertised does not give a man ideas. The studying and
dissecting stimulate his mind to activity, but the ideas
come from the man—not from the thing.

That‟s one of the reasons why an advertising agency

cannot turn itself into a machine arid keep up its
efficiency.

To be a success, advertising must be focused on the

current of human life. In other words, it must connect
itself with something that the reader already knows.

Yellow journal editors, who are generally better

advertising men than journalists, always inject this
quality of human interest into their news. When they
describe the gigantic Lusitania, they print a picture of the
ocean liner put down in a city street, where she sprawls
along for three blocks, her main deck rising to the level of
the fifth floor of the houses.

To say that a steamship is 750 feet long doesn‟t mean

much to the average man, because he is not accustomed
to visualizing bare figures, but the right sort of picture
gives him a conception that sticks.

In addition to the qualities of news, human interest,

and attractiveness, good advertising is always
characterized by salesmanship—and that can be put into
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 26

an advertisement only by a man who knows how to sell

goods. With the selling feature left out, any trained
newspaperman could write advertising and not half try.

When Joe Gans, the Negro lightweight, left for Nevada

to contest the championship of the world and a prize of
some forty thousand dollars with Battling Nelson, his old
mammy told him: “Joe, no mattah what yuh do, doan‟
furgit to bring home de bacon.”

This was sound advice, for if you don‟t bring home the
bacon; there is no sense in making the trip at all.

A bringing-home-the-bacon attitude is a healthy state

of mind for an advertising writer.

In writing advertising, as in saying prayers, the state

of mind in which it is done has a great deal to do with the
quality of the product. There is only one standpoint from
which an advertisement, or an advertising campaign,
should be considered; and that is: “Will it sell goods?” If
you are a writer of advertising you will never step down
from that standpoint if you keep your mind keyed up to
the bringing-home-the-bacon tension.

Some writers of advertising maintain a permanent

mental attitude of trying to impress other advertising
men.

This is a mistake, for advertising men, as a class, are

inclined to judge an advertisement on its appearance
alone. They attach too much importance to attractiveness
of design, and to mere cleverness.

In the effort to be original they turn themselves inside

out, and the result is a freak production that should be in
a dime museum instead of in a selling contest.

There is not an idea, or a thought, that is wholly

original. It is probable that the old Greeks—who were
clear and lucid thinkers—filled out the entire circle of
possible conceptions, as applied to form and color, in the
material sense; and as applied to human relations in the
psychological sense.

Since their day the same ideas have been worked over
and over into many shapes, but without changing their
substance.
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 27

If an entirely original idea should occur to any man it

would not be worth—as advertising material—the space it
would take to write it down.

Advertising must be written to strike the average

intellectual level of the public, and the public is not
floating around in the upper strata of transcendental
thought.

Some years ago a series of clever advertisements

written to sell a product of general use appeared in
magazines and newspapers. The pictures were so
attractive and the text was so gracefully written, that the
advertising made an immediate hit.

Everybody talked about it—and admired it. The

advertisements were reproduced wholesale in the
advertising trade journals. The clever advertising man
who had thought it all out gave interviews to the trade
papers and told just how this wonderful feat had been
accomplished.

But—

The campaign was a failure. The copy was too clever,

too attractive, too original. The public thought so much of
the advertising itself that it forgot all about the
commodity behind it.

The poorest advertising is that which disregards the

common, ordinary facts of life.

To make a success of advertising you must know how

people live, what they are thinking about, what they eat
and wear, what they read and talk about.

You must understand exactly how a man can support

a family on ten dollars a week—and you must also know
how a thousand-dollar-a-month family spends its income.

An advertiser began a newspaper campaign to

popularize a breakfast food in New York a couple of years
ago. The plan was based on a distribution of free
samples, and the method of distribution was as follows:

Any woman who would go to a grocery store and wink

at the man behind the counter was entitled to a free 15-
cent package.
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 28

It was necessary to wink. The grocer was not obliged

to hand out a free package to any lady who simply asked
for it, but the wink was supposed to get the goods.

All this was explained by advertisements occupying

large spaces, exhibiting the picture of a woman winking,
to show bow it should be done.

This scheme must have grown out of a remark-able

ignorance of life. What sort of a man would allow his wife,
or daughter, to wink at a grocer, on the chance of
obtaining fifteen cents worth of cereals?

But some women did go and wink.

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 29

Outdoor Advertising
The poster is the connecting link in a general
advertising campaign. Our experience shows that in many
advertising campaigns explanatory, educational copy,
even when widely used in magazines and newspapers,
can be greatly strengthened at a remarkable low
additional cost by the use of bill posting.

Highly artistic, pleasing posters that are fresh, brief

and snappy appeals, placed at vantage points along the
lines of heaviest travel, carry a powerful selling force.

The buyer has already been told through the columns

of publications what the article is, why, how and where it
should be used, etc.

At the psychological moment, while the shopper is on

the way to stores, he is told in huge, attention-
compelling, interest-arousing letters to buy today—now.

The package is shown or the article itself in its original

colors.

The constantly increasing necessity of localized force

in exploiting products (particularly the low priced package
articles of general consumption), which are handled
through retail dealers, has war-ranted the establishment
of this department of our business on an elaborate scale.

We believe it is the best equipped outdoor advertising

organization in existence.

The difference between outdoor advertising service

given advertisers within the last ten years and the service
obtainable through our organization today has been
marked by great advancement.

We are responsible for some of this advancement and

we hate kept pace with all of it. We are doing some things
that are unusual and some things heretofore unheard of
in the preparation and handling of outdoor campaigns.

We do not follow the usual custom of apportioning

posters to a territory based on the population of that
territory, and leave the distribution entirely in the hands
of the local association of bill posters.

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 30

Before presenting a bill-posting plan to a client, we

first thoroughly study his sales problem from his
knowledge and ours of the sales condition in the territory
named. We figure on the response that can be expected
from buyers in that territory to this form of publicity.

This information and data are of great value to our

clients in the preparation of their outdoor campaigns.

Not only are we familiar with the wants and

necessities and desires of people in a given territory, but
with the trade conditions governing it as well. This
knowledge is supplemented with that of thorough
familiarity with the principal posting and bulletin plants
throughout the entire United States and Canada.

We have on file data and information of every bill-

posting plant in the United States and Canada. In addition
to knowing how the plants are operated we know the
general run of billboard locations in any particular town,
the possibilities of that territory as a market for the
product to be advertised, and all the figures necessary in
distributing the number and character of posters
necessary to bring about the desired result.

Posting a five-cent chewing tobacco on high class

residence streets or a five-dollar shoe in the tenement
districts means lost circulation and waste of force.

Yet without the most carefully compiled posting

instructions to the local bill-poster based on a thorough
knowledge of his bill-posting plant, unsatisfactory
distribution is sure.

The organization which enabled us to litho-graph,

print and post a sixteen-sheet campaign poster in Omaha,
Nebraska, forty-nine hours after the copy was handed to
us in New York; the organization that enabled the
Republican National Committee to post the entire list of
doubtful states from North Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas
to New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, within six days
after we received copy for the eight and sixteen-sheet
poster used, is at your disposal, either as a whole or in
part.

We are official solicitors of the Associated Bill Posters

and Distributors of the United States and Canada and of
the Advertising Painters‟ League of America and are
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 31

equipped to handle bill posting, painted bulletin or wail

campaigns of any size, in any territory, at any time.

For further information address:

J. Walter Thompson Company

New York............................44 East 23d Street
Boston................................31 Milk Street
Detroit................................Trussed Concrete Building
Chicago...............................The Rookery
Cleveland.............................American Trust Building
Cincinnati.............................First National Bank Building

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 32

Funny Advertising
We don‟t believe in funny advertising. The expenditure
of money is entirely too serious to the average man to be
made the subject of a joke. Any fool can attract a crowd,
but a fool isn‟t much of a salesman.

A street fakir, dressed in a fantastic rig, can draw a

thousand people to any street corner—if the police let him
alone long enough—while Andrew Carnegie may walk
through the crowd without attracting any attention at all.

But Andrew Carnegie can make ten thousand dollars

while the street huckster is making two dollars and a half.

A composite made up of John Wanamaker and Lew

Dockstader would certainly be worth going some distance
to see, but a good minstrel and a great merchant would
be spoiled in the making.

Some things will not mix at all—and among them are

advertising and buffoonery.

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 33

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
The passengers on board a transatlantic liner
sometimes learn—the next morning—that the ship passed
within a hundred yards of an iceberg the night before.

The thought of what might have happened scares

them at first, but when they find that no hones are
broken and everything is safe they congratulate
themselves on being aboard a ship manned by a capable
captain and officers.

There are icebergs and shoals in the advertising sea,

and the only way for an advertiser to avoid them is to
turn his advertising interests over to an agency that has
the right sort of experience and navigating skill.

The J. Walter Thompson Company has the practical

knowledge and long experience necessary to carry the
advertiser away from the dangerous places.

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 34

Advertising Luxuries
Have you ever thought that if we exclude from
consideration such primitive necessities as bread and
meat, everything else in the world is a luxury?

The chair you are sitting in is a luxury. You consider it

a necessity, but once it was a gorgeous luxury—for
mankind sat on the ground for some thousands of years.

The difference between a luxury and a necessity is

simply this: A necessity is a luxury in universal demand.
As the desire for a thing increases it becomes more and
more a necessity. The luxury of today is the necessity of
tomorrow.

Most sellers of luxuries are oppressed with the idea

that they can build up only a very limited trade at the
best—and that any extensive effort to get new business
would be a failure.

The history of business development shows this point

of view to be erroneous. Carpets and rugs are luxuries,
but everybody buys them; the inkwell on your desk is a
luxury—for you might as well use the original ink bottle;
and among luxuries in large demand are toilet powders,
automobiles, most books, all pictures, artistic lamps,
silverware, and hundreds of articles in everyday use.

The name O‟Sullivan stands for rubber heels.

Ask any man you happen to meet who makes rubber

heels, and the chances are ten to one that he will say,
O‟Sullivan. We have tried it and that is the result. As a
matter of fact, there are other rubber heels, but the
average man doesn‟t know it.

O‟Sullivan has popularized the rubber heel. His

advertising has shown the pubic the real importance of
putting an elastic cushion between the heels and the
ground.

Before rubber heels were advertised they had a small

sale among the people who take the trouble to investigate
things. Now they are sold by millions of pairs.

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 35

Advertising has created new demands, has opened

new avenues of sale, has interested the big, prosperous
public.

Isn‟t there a moral in this for you?

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 36

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
During an experience in advertising longer than the
average human life, the J. Walter Thompson Company
has developed many commodities out of the luxury class
into the necessity class.

We know what kind of advertising should be done,

how the copy should be written, and what media should
be used, to popularize luxuries.

If your particular problem lies in this direction, write

us and we can give you some valuable information.

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 37

Trademark Publicity
This is an age of faith. All ages have been ages of
faith. There has never been a century, or a year, or a
day, in the history of the human race when mankind did
not have a living faith in many things.

The human mind abhors distrust as nature abhors a

vacuum.

Men and women like to believe. Credulity, which

means simply an exaggerated tendency to take things on
faith, is a human instinct, and it takes lots of cultivation
to kill it. Disbelief requires an effort of the will, while
Belief requires only acquiescence.

Every reader of this paragraph believes that the earth

rotates on its axis every twenty-four hours. But there is
not a man among you who can prove it. The proof
requires an abstruse astronomical demonstration, and
most of us prefer to accept it on faith.

Advertising turns human faith into an asset.

Faith is intangible, and so is intellect; but intellect

rules the world. Faith cannot be weighed, or seen, or felt,
but the advertiser can measure its value in the dollars
that come to him from advertising.

Here is a single word, reproduced just as it has

appeared in many thousands of advertisements:

Every reader of this booklet knows what the word

stands for. It needs no diagram or definition to explain it.
Among all classes of the American people—except
possibly the poorest and most illiterate—the name
“Huyler‟s” is as well known as the name of the President
of the United States.

When your wife wants a box of candy, she doesn‟t say

that she wants you to bring home a box of Huyler‟s
Candy. She says: “I would like to have a box of Huyler‟s,”
and you go to your office without being the least bit
confused as to whether she meant Huyler‟s Sausages, or
Huyler‟s Sachet Powder.

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 38

Huyler‟s means high-grade candy. That impression

has been so thoroughly pounded into the American mind
that it would take blasting operations to remove it.

Eighty cents is the price of a pound of Huyler‟s. There

are other candies at higher prices, and lots of good
candies at lower prices. But advertising, carried on for
years, has made Huyler‟s the standard American candy.

How much do you suppose the trademark “Huyler‟s” is

worth? We do not know; but if every customer, who buys
a pound of candy now and then, is worth a dollar (and
that seems to be a fair estimate), then the capitalized
value of the Huyler trademark must be worth millions.

Here‟s another point of view. If the Huyler people

were to close their factories and stores, and stop making
candy, their trademark would still be a enormous asset.

If it were turned over to a new and entirely different

concern, this young enterprise would find itself in
possession of the biggest candy trade in the United
States. The trademark would carry the business, just as
the flag is supposed to carry the Constitution.

The latest and most vigorous phase of advertising

began not more than a dozen years ago. This is not very
far back, compared to the range and sweep of recorded
history, but a man who is now twenty-four was only a boy
of twelve then.

There are many manufacturers and dealers who have

advertised straight through these dozen years, without a
break. While they have been getting profitable results
from the beginning, the Big Results are now coming in.

Why?

Because millions of young men and women have

grown up with the names of these advertisers before
them every day.

If their minds could be analyzed you would find a

score of advertised articles mixed in with recollections of
football and picnics, and impresssions of Saplio, Huyler‟s
and the Gold Dust Twins, jumbled up with George
Washington and Bunker Hill.

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 39

To the younger generation the persistent advertiser

does not represent an ordinary business enterprise. He is
an institution—like the Bank of England, or the Library of
Congress.

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 40

Message from J. Walter Thompson,

President
There is a story of an Irishman who had been arrested
on a charge of poaching based on evidence that was
circumstantial and rather weak. As he had no money to
pay for a lawyer, the Court appointed a young and
briefless practitioner to defend him.

The inexperienced young lawyer bungled the case in

such a way that the defendant was found guilty.

In sentencing him the judge said: “Ignorance of the

law excuses no one—,” but before he could finish the
sentence, Pat exclaimed: “Then, Yer Honor, I guess yez‟ll
be giving me lawyer a life sentence.”

The moral to advertisers is: In advertising your

advertising agent is your lawyer. You owe it to yourself
not to select one who would be in danger of getting a life
sentence if ignorance were a crime.

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 41

SPANISH

The natural and obvious foreign market for American

manufacturers lies among the South American republics.
They are our neighbors—but not our rivals.

Between South America and the United States there is

no competition to produce friction and resentment. There
is no point of contact where our interests clash.

Our Southern neighbors are planters, sheep and

cattle-raisers, and miners. It is true that both Argentina
and the United States are both large wheat ex-porters,
and are in this sense, competitors in the world‟s markets;
but the United States produces five times as much rain as
Argentina, and consequently, makes the price.

The accident of geography places our manufacturers

at the door of the South American market. We are nearer
to many—or most points—in South America than our
European competitors. The development of facilities for
transportation is gradually turning this geographical
relation into a highly practical reality.

In a few years the opening of the Panama Canal will

put most of the important points of the West Coast—
doorways to the rich lands of Ecuador, Peru and Chile—
within ten days of New York.

The ordinarily intensely alert American manufacturer

has not heretofore been fully alive to his opportunities on
the South American continent.

This observation is true, in the main, in spite of the

fact that there are American manufacturers and
advertisers who have built up big and ever-expanding
demands for their products among the South American
states. What is true of a few enterprising firms ought to
be true of many.

Your South American trade ought to be a matter of

course—if you sell such products as toilet soaps,
perfumery, patent medicines, shoes, sewing machines,
typewriters, automobiles, dry goods and fabrics, talking
machines, farm and other machinery, fire arms and
furniture.

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 42

The Spanish Department of the J. Walter Thompson

Company is prepared to aid you materially in developing
a South American trade.

We place more advertising in South American

periodicals and newspapers than all other advertising
agencies combined. Fully eighty per cent of the
advertising in South America for American advertisers is
placed through this agency.

We make accurate and idiomatic translations of

advertisements, circulars, and labels, and furnish our
clients with information concerning advertising media and
trade conditions.

Events of recent years, such as Secretary Roots tour

of South America, and the visit of the battle-ship fleet—
which was received with tremendous enthusiasm in every
port—have aroused a strong and live interest in the
United States. American manufacturers should take
advantage of this.

Now is the psychological moment to introduce your

goods.

Sixty millions of people in the Latin-American

republics are spending more than $490,000,000 every
year for wares of foreign manufacture.

The lion‟s share of this enormous trade goes to

Europe, then, by every conclusion of logic, it should come
to the United States.

For instance, we are the largest customer that does

business with Brazil. We buy annually eighty millions of
dollars worth of coffee, crude rubber, and other Brazilian
products. But Brazil buys from us only fourteen million
dollars worth of goods, leaving a balance in her favor of
sixty-six millions.

Chile‟s foreign purchase amounts to more than one

hundred millions of dollars every year, but of this the
United States gets only eight millions.

But an encouraging feature is that the American

business with South America is increasing steadily year
by year, and where American manufacturers have taken

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 43

the trouble to introduce their goods properly, and to

advertise, they have met with ratifying success.

Some manufacturers have neglected the South

American field under the mistaken impression that the
chief business of the South Americans is to take part in
revolutions, and that all property is unsafe.

This is a great mistake. Brazil and Argentina and

Chile, for instance, have governments as stable as that of
the United States, and their people are industrious and
prosperous.

Buenos Aires is one of the great and splendid cities of

the world—excelling even New York in the beauty of its
architecture and in comfort in living. It is the home of
vast municipal enterprises, conducted on the highest
plane of organization and efficiency.

Both Rio Janeiro and Santiago de Chile are cities of

the same class as Buenos Aires.

A South American is moved by an advertisement just

as if he lived in Chicago. Human nature is the same on
the slopes of the Andes as it is on the slopes of the
Adirondacks.

The J. Walter Thompson Company requests the

pleasure of making a full representation of the facilities of
the Spanish-American Department to those who
contemplate entering upon this great field of trade.

Our knowledge of the territory to be covered and our

experience in the introduction of goods by advertising
enable us to render valuable assistance to those planning
an advertising campaign in the South American states.

Address
Spanish Department
J. Walter Thompson Company
New York

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Some Cardinal Principles

You mustn‟t expect advertising to do it all. If an
investment in advertising space were the only thing
required to make a man rich, there would be more
millionaires in the United States than there are colonels in
Kentucky.

There is no magic in advertising. It is just a plain,

common sense proposition. It is not a gamble, but an
investment. Like all other investments, it takes time to
mature, and it needs careful attention all the time.

An advertising campaign, which means a series of

advertisements placed at strategic points, is like a corps
of salesmen. When you employ men to sell your goods,
you do not fold your hands and let them shift for
themselves.

You cooperate with them in every practicable way.

That‟s what you should do when you advertise. Your

advertisement appearing in a certain locality is a
salesman visiting the homes of the people of that
community.

But suppose you are advertising an article that is sold

through retailers and your distributing system is so weak
that only a few dealers have it in stock. How can you
expect your advertising salesman to do efficient work?
The demand has been created, but your cooperation has
fallen down at the critical moment.

The result is that the public interest in your goods

gradually peters out, and your advertising campaign,
which has cost real money, is a failure.

It is possible, of course, to develop by advertising, a

pubic demand so insistent that retailers will hunt you up
and drag your goods away from you to fill their
customers‟ orders. But this involves a brutal waste of
money in advertising space.

Isn‟t it better to show retailers what you intend to do

in the advertising line, enlist their cooperation, and get
your goods well distributed at the start of the campaign?

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 45

Many successful advertisers make up handsome

folders containing proofs of their advertisements at the
beginning of each season. These are given to their
traveling salesmen to show to retailers.

This puts the retail dealer in touch with your general

plan, and he keeps step with it.

There are other advertisers who prepare a series of

mailing cards to go out to the retailer once a month, or
once a week, according to circumstances. On the back of
each card the current advertisement for the month is
reproduced, with information as to the publications in
which it appears, and any other facts that may be of
interest to the dealer.

Advertising, like Allah, helps the man who helps

himself.

Sowing advertising in the commercial field is like

planting seeds in a garden. It is easy enough to stick
seeds in the ground, but if you pay no attention to them
when they sprout you will soon find that your garden is
over-run with weeds.

Every manufacturer knows that a manufacturing plant

may be so unfavorably located, or so poorly equipped, or
so badly managed, that it is operated at a loss. It‟s the
same way with advertising.

But you may write it down as a cast-iron, undeviating,

cardinal, bedrock principle that advertising always pays, if
it is done right, and has the right sort of goods behind it,
and gets the right sort of cooperation from the advertiser.

There is something in the lackadaisical half-hearted

attitude of some advertisers that reminds us of the
colored servant girl who married but refused to change
her name. Before she married her name was Amanda
Jones. Her wedding to a saddle-colored gentleman by the
name of Coakley natu-rally made her Mrs. Coakley.

Some months after the happy event, her mistress

noticed that she still referred to herself as Miss Jones.
Calling her in one day, her mistress said: “How is it
Amanda, that your husband‟s name is Coakley, but you
still call yourself Jones?

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 46

“Well, it‟s disway, m‟am,” Amanda replied, “you see

me and Arthah hadn‟t known each other „cept for a short
time, an‟ I kinder suspected dat niggah anyway, an‟ I
suspects him yit, so I figgered dat it would be best for all
parties if I jes‟ kep‟ my name.”

Trial marriages are not very successful in advertising.

Don‟t advertise until you know just what you want to do,
and then stick to your intention.

When a carpenter drives a nail he doesn‟t hit it two or

three taps and then go away for the day. He drives it
straight home with steady and regular blows, and an
extra lick as a finishing stroke.

Imitate the carpenter. We say this with emphasis, for

lack of persistency seems to be one of the commonest
failings of advertisers.

Persistency is the twin brother of Energy, and the

cousin of Success. It is closely related to every one of the
big and noble qualities that have put the white man in the
front rank of the world‟s peoples.

Columbus believed that land lay beyond the Western

Ocean for half a lifetime before he could get anybody to
give him any consideration. George M. Pullman had the
idea of a sleeping car in his head for years before any
railroad would give him a chance to try his scheme.

When Jean Francois Millet‟s wonderful peasant

pictures were exhibited at the Paris Salon, and all the
world—fell into a flutter of admiration, those whose
interest had been suddenly aroused expected to find
Millet a young man.

They were surprised to learn that he had been

painting for twenty years. His work remains today the
greatest accomplishment in art that the world has seen
since the Italian Renaissance. Charles Darwin was an
invalid all his life. He never passed a day without going
through hours of excruciating pain.

He was a fit subject for a home for incurables. But he

spent many years in the arduous toil of collecting obscure
scientific data, in arranging it and in analyzing it. The
result is the Darwinian theory of evolution, which is by far

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 47

the most important scientific production of the nineteenth

century.

When Napoleon was the master of Europe from Lisbon

to Warsaw, and had created, by his victories of Marengo,
Austerlitz, Wagram, Friedland and Jena, a military
reputation without parallel in the records of mankind, the
English were the only people in Europe who stood ready
to fight as often as he pleased.

England has never produced a general that could be

mentioned in the same breath as Napoleon, and while
Englishmen are brave, they certainly have no more
courage than the French.

But what‟s the use whipping a fellow if you can‟t

convince him that he is whipped, unless you bury him and
put a stone over the place to hold him down?

Napoleon was sent into retirement at Saint Helena,

not by English generalship, but by English persistency.

In the light of all the stirring deeds that men have

accomplished by sticking to one thing, and never letting
go, doesn‟t it seem pitiable that so many advertisers get
cold feet?

You cannot succeed in business if you have a

wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

Another cardinal principle of successful advertising is

common, ordinary honesty.

There is no record in all history of a dishonest

institution becoming a permanent success.

Honesty in advertising means giving a buyer who lives

a thousand miles away, and who has no redress, a square
deal, both in the printed description of your goods, and in
the price you put upon them.

Advertising is founded on the confidence of the public,

but confidence does not indicate unlimited gullibility.
Honesty is an absolutely essential requisite for the
preservation of confidence, and, it follows that an
advertiser who is not honest not only ruins his own cause
in the end, but injures the business of every other
advertiser.
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www.BillionDollarAdSecrets.com