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THE
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VOL. LXII. No. 20 Published Every Saturday by the Estate of Edward Lyman Bill at 373 4th Ave., New York, May 13, 1916
Single Copies 10
$2.00 Per Year
Advertising and Its Purpose
I
F, in future generations, a compilation of the wonders of the present day and age is made, the list will be
incomplete should the science of advertising be unmentioned.
The earliest advertising medium was the human tongue. The merchants of primitive times walked
about the streets crying the qualities of their wares. From this humble beginning, advertising has
developed into a science, governed by rules and principles which have been evolved with almost the same
unvarying accuracy and care which attended the creation of those formulas upon which the science of
astronomy is predicated.
Yet, in spite of the metamorphosis which has taken place in the gradual evolution of business, the tongue
still plays an important part in the modern science of publicity, for the advertising of to-day seeks but to start
it wagging—to start people talking about the merchandise which the advertising features.
Many piano men seem to hold to the theory that advertising is designed merely to create new customers,
to open new accounts, to sell new goods. This is but a half truth. One of the fundamental objects of all
advertising is to keep a name, a concern, or a product, constantly in the public mind and before the public eye —
to keep the public continuously talking and thinking about the product advertised, whether any immediate
sales result therefrom or not.
In the assets of any established concern that intangible something called good-will holds a most important
and valuable place. Good-will cannot be materialized, it cannot be weighed or measured, and yet it is one of
the foundation stones upon which the structure of modern enterprise is raised.
Consistent, persistent, sensible advertising is the greatest factor known to-day in the creation and con-
tinuance of good will. Examples of this are not hard to find. Witness the national publicity campaigns which
are constantly carried on by the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., popularly known as the Bell Telephone
Co. It would be exceedingly difficult to trace the installation of a single telephone directly to any one printed
advertisement of the telephone concern, yet it is an unquestionable fact that the continuous advertising which
has been done by this concern has created an appreciation of the convenience offered by the telephone, and has
established a good-will for the telephone, as an instrument, and for the Bell Telephone Co., as the purveyors
of this instrument, which cannot be measured in mere dollars and cents.
The Victor Talking Machine Co. is reported to have spent $250,000 in newspaper advertising during
the Christmas season last year, and this despite the fact that the unfilled orders in the factory, long before the
Christmas season approached, were sufficient to consume the entire output of the plant for the coming twelve
or eighteen months. In other words, the actual number of talking machines sold by the Victor company
during the month of December would have remained the same had not a line of advertising appeared in any
publication. If this be true, why did the Victor company spend a quarter of a million dollars to advertise
machines for which orders had already been obtained? Simply to maintain the good-will which the company
enjoys, and to strengthen, if possible, the Victor name as a concomitant of the talking machine throughout the
civilized world.
The same theory is as directly applicable to the great piano houses. It is exceedingly doubtful if anyone
ever purchased a Steinway piano, for example, simply and solely because of the fact that they happened to see
an advertisement of that instrument in some publication, yet the continuous advertising of the Steinway, which
has been carried on for many years, has so firmly established the Steinway name in the mind of the public
that the man on the street, if asked to name over half a dozen leading pianos of the day, will undoubtedly
include the Steinway in that list.
The Steinway advertising, the Aeolian advertising, the Chickering advertising, the Mason & Hamlin adver-
(Continued on f>age 5.)