Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
13
ADVERTISING THAT DEVELOPED BIG NEW DISTRIBUTION OUTLET-(Continued from page 12).
that the advertising, productive as it had been in
every city, was not exactly on the right basis. It
always featured two pianos, specially priced at
$395 and $248.75. They were meant to act as sales
C. Alfred Wagner.
leaders, and to an extent did so, assisting in build-
ing up a large and profitable business.
Weak Point in Advertising.
The weak point of the advertising was that it
gave the impression that the departments were
selling only these two grades. Apparently, only 1
those people who came to the department to in-
quire about the bargains realized that the depart-
ment was selling other lines.
How to advertise that the department was
handling all these other high-grade pianos and
player-pianos without sacrificing the pulling power
of the special offer was our problem, and it gave
us a good many days of hard thinking.
There was one idea that we kept circling around
and veering back to after every side excursion.
We felt that the thing to do was to reduce the
space devpted so exclusively to price consideration
and make more of the big names on our product—•
Knabe, Chickering, Vose, Kohler & Campbell,
Autopiano, Fischer, Haines, Pianista, Stratford,
Packard, Charles Kohler. We knew it was impos-
sible to get away from price altogether—the piano
business, more than most other trades, has suf-
fered so much and so long from every kind of
abuse of the price appeal that the highest prestige
is required to do without it in some form. Neither
did we want to minimize our price and terms when
these were among our greatest selling advantages.
We wanted to spread the advantages over all the
line and connect up the national prestige of the
piano manufacturers with the local store and our
department.
We were still turning our problem over in our
mind when we saw in Printers' Ink last year the
description and reproduction of a remarkable se-
ries of advertisements which the mail order house
of Montgomery Ward & Co. was running in the
agricultural and mail order press. These adver-
tisements, which were largely composed of line
drawings by some of the best-known black-and-
white artists of the day, were a radical departure
from the old mail order price advertising and
were designed to impress upon the farmer the high
character, business integrity and immense re-
sources of the house of Montgomery Ward. It
was intended to lead the farmer to give more
weight to whatever Montgomery Ward & Co. said,
and so deepened that house's price appeal.
In a word, it was our problem, and perhaps our
solution. We got the whole set of drawings from
Printers' Ink and studied them. We studied the
story of the advertising manager as to the various
steps by which the big mail order house had
reached this conclusion. And then we waited to
see what would happen to Montgomery Ward.
Time having demonstrated the soundness of the
Ward experiment, we cast about to see in what
way we might embody the new theory in our ad-
vertising. We did not care to follow the model
too closely. We had our own story to tell. We
could not dispense altogether with price. And we
did not go to C. D. Gibson or James Montgomery
Flagg to do the pictures.
Adaptation to Own Needs.
We compromised by giving the larger part of
the ad up to the picture, and putting price, terms
and other inducements down in fine type, but
nevertheless displayed, so that the person inter-
ested and impressed by the picture could not help
but see it. The artists we employed were young
men of recognized merit to whom we paid re-
spectable amounts for their work. The result may
be noted in the accompanying reproductions of
the page ads.
One or two illustrations may not give an ade-
quate idea of what we are trying to do through
them. The characteristic that distinguishes them
fiom the great majority of advertisements is: their
sentimental, emotional quality. This is not a nov-
elty in piano advertising, but it has not been done
nearly so much as you would think, at least with
pictures. Such advertising of this nature as has
The Music
That Mother
Played
Will You Play Those Old
Songs To-night?
OU can play them, you know. For
Y the
cost barrier has fallen in this
store from the best player-pianos and
pianos in the world. If you desire a fine player-piano or
a piano—the power of our organization ran rhange that
desire into realized possession!
Knabe
Autopiano
Vose
Milton
Fischer
Pianista
Haines Bros.
Stratford
Player-Pianos
A guarantee covering five yes
fill of death.
Certainl\—you can play any m
irorld—if you hut willl
A Two-Column Ad Like This Alternated with
Page Ad.
been done has been generally directed to the peo-
ple who buy expensive instruments. As though
people of moderate and even scant means were
lacking in sentiment or emotion!
There are a vast number of people who would
like pianos or player-pianos and do not realize it.
They have a love for music, attend the opera and
concerts, but have not been led to think seriously
about producing music in their own homes. They
may be reading now and then a good deal of
creative piano advertising. They are coming in
some time, but they are not ready yet.
Now, these people are not ready to talk terms,
they are not interested. All the price advertis-
ing glides over them. If we want to reach them
with our advertising, we have got to do it through
putting them into the music mood, through an
emotional appeal. The connection between the
deep desire and the gratification of it has got to
be the notification by an emotional means that the
desire can be gratified. If this is done and done
right, then the full information about price, terms
and inducements that we tuck away in one corner
of the ad, not too much in evidence, not too ob-
scure, is a strong incitement to buy at once.
Price talk leaves some people cold; human-in-
terest pictures interest everybody. Combining the
two we get the dramatic approach, the emotional
appeal and the salient, effective closing by means
of the price and terms description, kept in the
background until the psychological moment.
Reflection of Idea's Bigness.
There is another type of big-space emotional ad
which we are alternating with the other. This is
designed to communicate our feeling about our
own proposition—our feeling that this co-opera-
tion between several big manufacturers and the
biggest dry goods corporation in the country
through our sales organization is a big thing, too,
and will inspire the public with confidence in our
offerings.
It is not only facts that inspire, but one's feel-
ing about facts. White-hot conviction and enthu-
siasm in the text makes converts and customers,
and so it does in the pictures, though that is not
so commonly attempted. By making our pictures
serious, by aiming at big conceptions, in the way
that thoughtful artists have done, we lift our
whole campaign to a higher plane, which is the
proper plane for musical appreciation. Then the
price apeal, if not too much obtruded, becomes of
double value.
By October we were ready to start in with these
ads for all of our departments, and we started in
on all together, pages twice a week in the appro-
priate newspapers, with each ad repeated in ten
inches over two columns on other days. The large
ads carried coupons. We ran five of the ads in
the period just before the beginning of the holiday
season, but judged it better to go back then to the
old type of bargain advertising until after New
Year's, when we shall resume the prestige pic-
tures.
We have not, therefore, given the new type of
advertisement the thorough try-out that it de-
serves in order to gauge its full possibilities. It
would not have surprised us if the business in
those two or three weeks had • fallen short of
what the old price appeal advertising would have
produced. We were willing to grant that it had
not the sting or the punch of the old type. We
felt it would be slower in starting business, more
than making it up later, though, by cumulative
effect. That would have been the natural expecta-
tion.
We were very pleasantly surprised to find that
right at the start the new ads produced just as
much business as the old price-inducement copy.
Judged by every standard we know and from
every point of view, they are just as effective as
the other kind. I think this is largely attributable
to the novelty of the ads. The influence of this
factor will decline later, but a rise of more than
compensating value ought to be registered for the
publicity in regard to the house and trade names.
This kind of advertising, which permits of great
variation in treatment, ought to increase in power
progressively.
Interesting St. Louis Experience.
The most suggestive experience of all came
from the store of Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney,
St. Louis. The department here had not run any
oi the old advertising, but started out in October
with the new prestige ads. This department is
claimed by the store to be the most magnificent
and complete piano store in the world. Its open-
ing was preceded by a five-column announce-
ment and description. The effect of this and the
succeeding prestige ads was in the beginning to
fall short of the performance of the old style
ads in connection with the other stores, but after-
(Continued on page 14.)