Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
FEBRUARY 16,
1918
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
stiffened all around and the ultimate consumer must pay, for
the first time, a fair price for pianos and player-pianos.. There-
fore, since it is positively necessary to sell goods of high grade,
and those who have the money are more numerous than ever,
the conclusion is plain that the salesman must make up his mind
to concentrate on small grands and player-grands, for sale to a
class of trade that has cash or something pretty nearly as good.
Can we dimly see the future day when the piano business will be
(Salesmanship)
13
conducted on a maximum of twelve months' time? It may
seem visionary, but one never can tell. Certainly the terms and
prices can be stiffened, the grade of instruments raised and the
class of consumer vastly improved, if the retail salesmen will
but make up their minds that new conditions are bringing about
a complete new orientation of thought about the industry.
Our guess is that the type of salesman who cannot fit in
with new ideas will not find much to do during 1918.
The Relation Between Advertising and Salesmanship
Wilbur E. Nesbit, in an Address Recently Delivered Before the Piano Club of
Chicago, Points Out Facts About Advertising That Every Salesman Should Know
features of the first Get Together meet-
O NE ing of of the the interesting
Piano Club of Chicago, held at the Auditorium
Hotel recently, was the advertising talk made by Wilbur E. Nes-
bit, author of "Your Flag and My Flag"—newspaperman, poet
and writer, and a member of the Rankin Advertising Agency.
After some introductory remarks along humorous lines he pro-
ceeded to get into the heart of his subject as follows:
"To become a successful advertiser a man must be a sales-
man. He musn't learn a whole lot of useless words and when he
gets a prospect in front of him start off like a phonograph and
shout them out. A young fellow once came into my office with
the intention of selling me a set of Dickens. Now, it happened
that at that time I wanted a set just exactly like the ones he was
selling, so I took his order blank and signed up and gave him a
check and told him where to send the books, and I did it so fast
that his eyes were kind of bulging out, and after I had given him
the check and the order he still stood there with the papers in
his hands looking at me. I turned to him and said, 'Well, you
got the order, what do you want now?' He said, 'Well, you
didn't give me a chance to tell my story.' Now, that's the kind
of a salesman that never would make an advertising man. He
had learned his story by heart and was dumfounded when he got
the business so quick that he didn't get the chance to tell the
story.
"An advertising man should know exactly everything there
is to know about a thing before he ever attempts to write about
it. This I have found true of the biggest ad writers in the coun-
try. I know in my own particular case that I can walk blind-
folded and backwards through any factory or concern that I have
ever written an advertisement for and tell you every minor detail
that is going on in that plant, whether it is making an automo-
bile tire, dipping chocolates, building a suit of clothes or doing
a half a dozen other different things. I make a study of these
things as does every other advertising man. I study the business
just as though it were a part of my own, and when I have a
thorough knowledge of the institution and its product, then and
only then can I write a successful ad. How many of you men
here today that have attempted to write a piano advertisement
know the history of the piano? Can you tell me who made the
first piano and.when it was made? Can you tell me how a plate
is made? Can you tell me how any part of the piano is made?
It is from these fundamental principles that a successful piano
ad writer knows what he is writing about, because he knows his
business. If it was not for that fact no one would ever get any-
where. If our friend Mr. Morton, of the American Steel & Wire
Co., didn't know acoustics and everything there is to know about
piano wire he would be just like the old-timers and be out chasing
a flock of geese in order to get the goose quills to use in the
precursors of the piano.
"I can remember the first time I ever saw Thomas Edison in
his laboratory. He was sitting and listening to one of his ma-
chines and was characteristically posed, just as he is in all of his
pictures. In those days I was not accustomed to meeting big
men and didn't know just exactly how to take him, and I thought
all he could do was to use words and phrases and sentences that
would take the. best part of my life to decipher. Instead of that,
I found a man who could swear and chew tobacco as well as any
one I ever met. My idea in going to see him was to ask him
about a certain kind of a dictaphone that I had been thinking
about, and I thought that it would be something that would in-
terest him, as in my opinion it was new and novel. I wanted to
ask him if it wasn't possible to get out a dictaphone attachment
for a telephone whereby a man could get a call and not only listen
to what the party at the other end had to say, but would have a
record of it after the conversation was over. To my surprise,
Mr. Edison called his assistant, Mr. Elliott, and said: 'Take this
man over to the laboratory and show him what he has been talk-
ing about.'
"Now, I have mentioned this because I want to bring out the
point that Mr. Edison has always lived from ten to fifteen years
ahead of the times. That's the way a successful advertising man
must be—ahead of the times. Perhaps not so far, but just far
enough in advance of the other fellows that he can see the pos-
sibilities of the thing and not be astonished and astounded when
anything goes on the market. Edison is a part of history exactly
like Caesar is a part of history, only Caesar is dead and Edison
is living and working for his country. His great genius would
have been for naught if it were not for advertising. Advertising
brought it about. Wherever there is advertising you will find
civilization and where you find civilization and advertising you
will find music.
"Some men are wonderful musicians. Some are good pianists,
some are good cornetists, some are good violinists, and numerous
men are exceptionally good musicians on the bass drum, but we
would never know these facts if it were not for advertising. They
get to be big men through advertising, but it is a hard thing to
write an ad. The average man writes an advertisement just from
what he thinks, not from what he knows, but advertising isn't
merely writing. It is merchandising. A man must be a good
merchant before he is a good writer. He must know the whole
inside of the works. He must think of himself not as a general
writer, but as a jack-of-all-trades, a master of advertising. A
man who sells a piano to-day is entitled to a service star in a flag,
as a man who can sell a piano in these trying times deserves a
service star. He is playing on human desires, not vanity. In a
measure it is vanity, but when vanity ceases, the desire still exists.
He can sell a man a piano for, say, $300 to-day and satisfy that
man's vanity, but in a short while there is a desire to own a big-
ger and better instrument. It is the merchandising not only of
the salesman but of the advertising man who creates this de-
sire.
"I know of an instance where a Los Angeles piano man has
instructed his salesmen that when there is anyone in the place
and there is no business going on, if a prospect should come into
the house one man should meet him at the door and start talking-
pianos to him and the other man or men should get in the rear of
the place and start playing on a piano, because the playing stimu-
lates the idea of the prospect and makes him think harder on what
he came for than if the place were as silent as a morgue.
"The advertising man who comes to you and says that he will
advertise your business by merely using 'Ten Terse Sentences'
is a fizzle. It can't be done. They'll tell you that the story of
the creation of the world was written in 600 words, but I want to
tell you right now that it would take more than 600 words or
'ten terse sentences' to make me buy another little old world like
this one.
"We are heading into the biggest year the country has ever
known. Men who sell goods today, whether it is beans, railroad
engines, pianos, talking machines, or horseradish, are 'going over
the top' and out into 'no man's land' and are going to bring back
the bacon, but advertising is going to be the thing that is going
(Continued on page 14)