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OCTOBER 11,
THE
1924
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
Service Basis of Good Advertising
James P. Lacey, of Peoria, 111., Before the Annual Convention of the Illinois Music Merchants' Association
at Springfield, 111., Analyzes the Advertising Policies of Some Music Merchants by Which
They Dig Their Own Business Graves and Points Out the Remedy Therefore
ET the following statement clearly be-
fore you, please, as I begin and perhaps
it will help to explain why I talk to you
as I am going to. I believe life itself is an ad-
vertisement. Your life and mine, as we live it
day by day, is either good advertising copy or
bad. Your business is, after all, an individual
unit and must be looked upon just as any in-
dividual in your city is considered. You can't
excuse that in business which you as an individ-
ual would not stoop to indulge in.
The conclusion in advertising is not reached
when your copy appears in print. No—your own
store's advertising starts the day you turn your
key in the door of your new store and continues
hour by hour, day by day, in your store life,
your social life and in the lives of your em-
ployes throughout every minute of your earthly
existence embracing all your activities, or lack
of them, all of the time. The degree in which
you emphasize consideration for customers,
kindness, honesty in your sales talks, the one-
price system, fair and sensible trade-in allow-
ances, determines whether or not you are in-
dulging in good advertising practice. You may
go through your business life and never run an
advertisement in your papers; you may never
send out a single line of copy, still you are
writing some kind of an advertisement through
your conduct in business every hour of every
day and it's an advertisement that will gain
larger circulation and be more potential in
results than any you will produce in your com-
munity.
In any discussion of advertising methods one
first must turn back to that greatest of all
fundamentals in business activity—service. Busi-
ness is service, nothing more nor less. We are
too apt in our scramble for dollars to conclude
that business is only carried on for the almighty
dollar. The accumulation of money is a by-
product of successfully managed business. The
good-will of many a mature business is far more
valuable than its bank balance. The man who
founded two thousand years ago what has be-
come the greatest business the world has ever
known, Christian Religion, builded entirely on
Service. His followers are carrying on largely
with this one thought in mind. A property
statement of the churches of the world to-day
would make a wonderful testimonial to the fact
that Service pays, I fancy.
Policies That Dig Business Graves
The business of the music man is supposed
to bring to his patrons happiness, consolation,
freedom from care and worry through the music
he is able to supply them with. "Music," says
Shakespeare, "washes away the dust of every-
day life." I have observed there are countless
music men, including the manufacturers and
jobbers, as well as the retailer, who use music
to bring all the worry, Irials, depression and
heartache to their patrons they possibly can;
who delight not in helping to "wash away the
dust," but in using it as a means of throwing
mud over the mental and physical being of their
patrons and fellow-merchants, foolishly believ-
ing they are getting some place and are mighty
clever chaps for doing it. Oh, how some music
men glory in their supposed cleverness. How
often have I listened to a vivid description (the
cheap no-account always is a most vivid descrip-
tionist) of this or that clever advertising or
sales stunt, only to walk away with pity in my
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heart for the poor fool who, persisting in such
policies, is surely and certainly digging his busi-
ness grave. The man who thinks he is clever,
by using advertising or sales methods that arc
questionable and designed to trick the people,
eventually gets his. There may be a "fool born
every minute," but we are educated quickly these
days and many of the born fools who remain
fools gravitate into the employment of ques-
tionable music concerns that are with us in the
business world but a little while, and then like
the Arab, "Fold their tents and silently steal
away"—if they can make it before the sheriff
is tipped off.
There is just one way to stay in business and
grow, and that is to play square. There is just
one way to advertise, that is, be truthful. There
is just one way to sell and that is stick to facts.
Analyze Your Own Methods
If you use tricky advertising copy and selling
methods in your store, ask yourself this ques-
tion, "If I were a prospective customer would
I buy a dollar's worth in my own store knowing
all I do about my own store, its advertising
methods, its sales plans, its treatment of cus
tomers?" If you can't answer that in the affirma-
tive your store is being operated on the wrong
basis. Don't kid yourself. Be square once, look
back over the past year's activities. Did you
promote a sensational advertising campaign
offering a new $750 player with fifty rolls, a $40
bench, a $10 scarf and a $60 piano lamp, all for
$281? Did you advertise pianos for $29, for-
getting to mention they were slightly used, hav-
ing been new thirty years ago? When that
windstorm blew in a cellar window for you, did
you rush into print with a "Tornado sale of
pianos damaged by wind and water," when youi
stock was on the second floor? Did you write
into your advertisement a statement that on
your floor during "this ten-day clearance sale
of pianos at less than cost" you had all the
well-known makes, such as Steinway, Mason &
Hamlin, Chickering, and all the other high-grade
pianos you had ever learned the names of which
to spell by close observation of a trade paper,
when actually you never handled anything but
stencils in your whole life and never saw a
Steinway unless you happened to attend some
high-grade concert (which is something many
so-called music men never do)?
If you have allowed your store to practice
such policies, policies you know positively are
lies, would you be willing to trade at your own
store? You bet you would not.
Building for Present or Future?
Are you in business for a few years only,
with the sole purpose of "getting the money
now while the getting is good"; of glorying in
the fact that "I trimmed a sucker that time";
of stooping to every kind of trickery, lies and
deceit to get by, or are you in business to build
an institution that will enjoy a dignified and
creditable position in your community long
after you have passed on? Are you building
your monument as you live, or do you prefer a
tumbled-over headstone atop a sunken grave
in the pauper cemetery of forgotten business?
Our organization houses enough idealism to
make us strive day by day to build a worth-
while monument. Service is our motto, truth
in advertising our aim always. We have no
need to dodge a customer of last week or last
year.
If you are building properly, the greatest
advertisement you'll ever have will be that ad-
vertisement you'll never write; that advertise-
ment which never will appear in print. That
copy will be based on how you are serving
your public. It will be written deeply on the
hearts and minds of men and women about your
town and the results of that advertisement will
bring you financial success, a business that will
grow year by year and a friendship and good-
will that can't be reckoned in dollars. Friend-
ship is the greatest thing in life. Build your
business through friendship and you'll prosper.
Belying Music's Influence
The music business should enjoy the greatest
friendships in this world. Through its years of
ofttimes questionable practices it is now sorely
in need of friends. The time has come to call
a halt .to such practice, for they, more than
any one other factor, have driven people away
from the comfort, the solace, the happiness
music can bestow. If you want better busi-
ness, music men, be more truthful in your adver-
tising and selling. Don't damn the automobile,
the picture show, the dance hall, but put the
blame where it belongs, and that's on our own
shoulders. How can anyone be convinced you
are sincere when you extol the virtues of music
in one breath and in the next devilishly set
about producing a rotten bit of copy that gives
the lie to your honeyed words.
If you don't enjoy music, if it doesn't strike a
responsive chord within you, if you are not
baptized in the religion of music, then you don't
belong in the music business. The music busi-
ness needs more preachers of the gospel of
music. If you would be treated as you treat
others, then you'll right about face on many of
your store policies, you'll write decent adver-
tisements, you'll dignify your business instead
of dragging it in the mud.
The time to start on the four-square road ot
truth in advertising is now, the place, at the
advertising desk of every manufacturer, jobber
and dealer, and the fellow to start it is you.
Don't wait for George to do it—he is busy.
My thought, then, on advertising is that serv-
ice to customers, true statements in all copy,
square and honest dealings with all patrons, and
back of it all a sincere and honest belief in and
appreciation of the value of music in life, are
the motives that must actuate us if our adver-
tising succeeds all along the way.
I believe by following this prescription dili-
gently any music man will succeed. We have
persevered for eight years along these lines.
New Piano Department
Opened in Murfreesboro
C. H. Byrn & Son, Hardware Dealers, Install
Line of , Waltham Pianos and Players in
Special Section.
MURFREESBORO, TENN., October 4.—Many patrons
were entertained at the formal opening of the
piano department of C. H. Byrn & Son's hard-
ware store, held here recently, and the display
of Waltham pianos and player-pianos has caused
much favorable comment. W. T. Lamb, a
representative of the Waltham Piano Co., Inc.,
Milwaukee, was present at the opening to assist
in the demonstration of the line.
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