Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MUSIC TRADE
lyze your goods? What does it show them to contain? What
romance is connected with your goods? Can you tell some stories
of the raw material, the manufacture, methods used in transport,
etc.?
Perhaps in the manufacture or delivery there is lurking senti-
ment that, properly used, will tug the heart strings with a jerk that
lands the order.
Get at the romance of the goods—some incident in the life of
the goods. Dig it up and use it. #If the customer knew of the
manufacture and sentiment connected with the goods before you
finally laid them before him his sympathy and interest would often
make the sale. Forget the polish once in a while. Paint for him
the picture of the forest in bloom and then the ring of the ax, the
log jam, the rafts of logs on the river, the giant buzz-saw, the
wonderful machinery, the boards going in at one end, and finally
the completed creation!
Know your goods and the story of your goods. Then tell it.
You will sell your goods.
REVIEW
There is a lesson here set forth by a writer in 'the Chicago
Tribune that should appeal to every piano and player-piano sales-
man.
It certainly pays to know your goods; you can sell them with
more enthusiasm, because they have a new interest for you, and
through you for the customer.
Think of the romance lurking in the music roll—the locked-up
genius of a liach, of a Mozart, of a Mendelssohn, of a Beethoven,
given new birth through the medium of a player-piano.
And then the player-piano!
What a fascinating story can be told of its evolution from the
crude musical toy of more than a quarter of a century ago to the
marvelous product of to-day.
How many salesmen know its history, appreciate its construc-
tion, or comprehend its wonderful mission ?
The salesmen "who know" are indeed a valuable asset to
their employers, to the buyers and to the industry.
We cannot have too nianv of them.
TOWEL
If a piano man wants a new building erected, he
goes to a builder. If he wants his store redecor-
ated, he calls in the decorator. He hires an ex-
perienced man to sell pianos for him and a first
class accountant to keep his books, but he either
lays out his advertising copy himself or passes
it over to the employe with the most time on
his hands. It is hard to see how a man can thus
neglect the most important department of his busi-
ness and then criticise the pulling powers of the
mediums among whom he divides his appropria-
tion. Advertising will pull in almost exact ratio
to the amount of care and skill devoted to its
make-up. A $5 a week office boy can fill a few
inches of space with words, but it takes a specialist
to till the same space with copy that will make the
investment pay. Many a man will, however, place
a dollar's worth of copy in a hundred dollar space,
and believe he's saving money, when the real econ-
omy would be to put the expensive copy in the
small space. One automobile concern recently con-
tracted for twelve double pages in the Saturday
Evening Post for the sum of $06,000—real money.
Did the president of that concern or one of his
subordinates attempt to fill that space with copy
regarding that particular make of automobile?
No! They were not so foolish. They solved the
matter by placing their account with advertising
specialists—a group of professional men who have
made advertising their life study, and who charged
fifteen per cent, of the appropriation for their
assistance in choosing the medium and preparing
the copy. In other words, the automobile people
felt that it was worth close to $17,000 to have that
$90,000 investment receive expert attention.
*
* *
The man who hires a skilled verterinarian to
treat a sick dog, worth a couple of hundred dollars,
without a thought of risking home treatment at his
own hands, would be the first one to think it waste
of time to spend five minutes' thought on copy for
an advertising space of equal value, and ofttimes
the bookkeeper or office boy gets "the job." Blank
space in an advertising medium is worth nothing.
It is the matter that appears in that space that will
produce the results. If a man has $25 to invest in
advertising, it would be better to pay $5 for space
and the balance for copy to fill it than to reverse
the process. An excellent illustration of the care-
lessness shown by some piano manufacturers in
the matter of advertising copy recently came to our
notice. On one page of a certain publication there
appeared five ads. of piano manufacturers. One
piano was described as being of "exceptional
value," another as "Big value for the money," and
the third as "Best value in the trade." All the
statements might have been true, but think how
some original copy would have stood out from
that group; some copy that was explicit and gave
some facts; copy that contradicted the idea that
the advertisers had bought the space and didn't
know what to do with it. More than one man's
faith in his ability to write "pulling" copy has
resulted in the shattering of his belief in the
value of advertising. The remedy is to either give
the subject the proper attention and make a study
of it or to pay for the services of the expert who
knows, and the latter course will be found to be
the most effective.
K m, *
The craze for investigations has reached a point
where, if the matter were not fraught with so much
danger, it might be looked upon as an amusing
game to guess what company is to be called up
next before a committee. We are far from ques-
tioning the propriety of many of these investiga-
tions, says Spencer, Trask & Co., but what we
should like to know is what, in the last analysis,
is their motive? If the government has set itself
out to punish every individual or corporation who
dares come to an agreement over prices with a
rival, or, put in another way, if the government
insists on forcing competition between individuals
or corporations whether they will it or not, then
it would be well to know just how far the law
demands that this competition go. Is it to be just
a nice, polite rivalry, such as exists between two
gentlemen who meet in a bloodless duel and then
consider their honor satisfied, or will the govern-
ment force these rivals into such a bloody battle
that the field will be strewn with wrecks and even
the victor left in an exhausted condition? We feel
that these are points which many of those poli-
ticians who talk so glibly of "busting the trusts"
should seriously consider. Fortunately, the public
seems to be realizing that these investigations are
being made more particularly for the purpose of
satisfying political exigencies.
*6 *5 *
The National Bankruptcy Protective Corpora-
tioon has been organized for the benefit of manu-
facturers, wholesalers and jobbers in their oper-
ations in 12 Southern States. It is the first or-
ganization of the kind in the United States, and
the intention is to extend its field to the entire
country after its work is in running order. The
headquarters of the concern are in Atlanta, Ga.,
but a New York office has just been opened in
the Metropolitan Life building. At the Atlanta
office is a corps of investigators and accountants
drawn from the Government service and trained
in bankruptcy matters. The States included in
its present field are Maryland, Virginia, West Vir-
ginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Mississ-
ippi and Florida. The record of fraudulent fail-
ures in these States is said to be the worst in any
part of the country. Whenever a failure ocurs
hereafter in any of them, provided a subscriber
of the company is a creditor, investigators will
be sent at once from Atlanta to the scene of ac-
tion, and a thorough inspection of the affairs of
the failed concern will be made on the ground.
The inquiry will include the facts leading up to
surrounding, and following the bankruptcy, a check
of schedules against previous inventories, cash and
credit sales, local records of convergences and
mortgages, and records of judgments. This work
could not be undertaken by the individual cred-
itor as a rule, because it would cost more than
the amount of the claim or more than it would
be worth on the chance of discovering fraud.
If fraud is discovered by the company's experts,
its attorneys will look after the prosecution of the
guilty party, and by these means it is expected
that the number of fraudulent failures will be
greatly reduced. The men behind the new organ-
ization are all said to be experienced in bank-
ruptcy matters. William M. Toomer, the presi-
dent, was formerly Solicitor General for Georgia
and special assistant to the Attorney General in
several prosecutions. A. J. Hoyt, vice-president
and general manager, was a special agent of the
Department of Justice in connection with bank-
ruptcies.
« •& *6
Miss Laurence Alma-Tadema has translated into
Knglish the eloquent pa'.riotic address delivered by
Paderewski at the Chopin Centenary Festival last
July—an address of which a prominent authority
says that "not often has such a sustained paean
been sung on the lyrical power of music." In
Paderewski's opinion, "Music is the only art that
actually lives. Her elements, vibration, palpitation,
are the elements of life itself." Of Chopin he
said, among other things: "He was a Slav, yet
how distant his grace and charm, his wealth of
color, of lights and shades, the unfailing fi'.ness of
his tragic sense from the sombre and monotonous,
although clever, Russian Muse, upon whose cheek
no smile of humor or of happiness seems ever to
have played. What light, what valor, what energy
were in him! He it was who first conferred
nobility on the peasant, the exquisite nobility of
beauty.
Poet, magician, monarch by right of
genius, he equalized all ranks; not down on. the
plains, on the flats and levels of every-day life,
but high up on the loftiest summits."
While unfair competition may sting for a time,
a thorough trust in the quality of the goods sold
and in the service that sells those goods is the
most effective means of defeating competition.