POWER OF ADVERTISING

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LI, Issue 66, 19 August 1930, Page 7

POWER OF ADVERTISING

MOTIVE FORCE IN SALES.

MESSENGER TO THE MASSES.

CREATING PUBLIC DEMAND,

Advertising, essentially, is the awakening of human desire (runs an editorial in the famous American weekly (Collier's). There is no stronger force in this new world of ours. The successful advertisement makes you crave' new things. The motive is frankly commercial, but the consequences reach far beyond trade. Though the purpose 6f an advertiser is primarily to sell his goods, the by-products of his efforts have had prodigious effects upon our opinions, our standards of taste, our habits, and even upon our picture of a good life. Contrast our familiar life of to-day with that of any other time and people and you get a vivid impression of what advertising has done for us. j We arise in the morning and we bathe. Why ? Merely because soapmakers have taught us the importance of cleanliness. Frequent washing is a new habit. Not even nobles and kings of the Middle Ages were addicted to the bath. Queen Elizabeth's courtiers could go days without the benefits of water. We learned I the habit from the soap men. Beards and even moustaches have gone out of fashion because manufacturers persuaded us to shave. Forty years ago the man who shaved daily was a dude. To-day a beard is a relic. Thank advertising for that if you are against whiskers. We clean our teeth because toothpaste manufacturers have made us believe in the importance of oral hygiene. They have saved us from more aches than the dentist could cure. Our breakfast habits are the results of the teaching of food-manu-facturers. The old heavy breakfast has gone the way of the hoop skirt. Our health is better. Advertising did it. The clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the furniture we use, our very conception of a home is the product of advertising. Motor-manufacturers taught us by the printed word and the illustrative picture to desire swift transportation. Millions of us began to want automobiles. The motor car revolutionised our way of living. S Look at our life from any standpoint and you will find our civilisatjion is built upon the use of things | for which advertisers stimulate a desire in us. We appreciate good music because of the teaching of phonograph and radio makers. Although in its earliest forms advertising was a two-word notice of seven letters—"For Sale"—modern advertising deals in ideas quite as i much as in commodities. Advertising with its subtle stimulation of our wants and aspirations makes us respond to multifarious appeals. The advertiser contrives the picture and tells the story, and we behave as he forsees we will. He succeeds, however, only when he tells the truth. Sincerity is essential. No advertisement can be eloquent enough to induce people repeatedly to buy a shoddy article, or to believe a lying story. Man is still a thinking and deciding animal. So powerful and persuasive is this

new force that the records show that those manufacturers who have appealed directly to the public through advertising have far outstripped their reticent competitors of other years. Statisticians are able to draw clear and startling lines revealing that, those manufacturers who have consistently carried their stories to consumers have become the leaders of industry. Those who stopped advertising stopped producing. The record is amazing. After all, public demand is intangible. You can't see it nor touch it. You can't even measure the effect upon yourself of reading week after week and month after month the messages sent out by manufacturers; that is to say, you can't measure the effect unless you take an inventory of your possessions and of your desires. Bankers could tell us, however, that we and so many thousands- and millions like us were moved cumulatively by such and such an appeal. The advertisers' imponderable appeal can be weighed and is weighed in the counting-house. We benefit in a thousand ways. We are trained to-demand good products. Given a choice, all of us instinctively demand an advertised product. We trust the known name. Often the advertised product is cheaper. National demand makes possible mass production, and that cuts costs. More directly, by creating a demand, advertising cuts marketing costs and so serves the consumer. If journalism is the little sister of literature, advertising began certainly as the Cinderella of selling. Now it is the great motives force in our commercial life. It is the life blood of public demand. Our material civilisation has been made possible by it. The old kings and aristocrats have departed. In the new order the masses are master. Not a few, but millions and hundreds of millions of people must be persuaded. In peace and in war, for all kinds of purposes, advertising carries the message to this new king—the people. Advertising is the king's messenger in the day of economic democracy. All unknowing, a new force has been let loose in the world. Those who understand it will have one of the keys to the future.