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lEYOTlffG LEDGEB-rHILADEL3HIA FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1915.
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Building Business on Facts Cutting Out the Gambling Element How We
Try to Benefit the Consumer, the Manufacturer and the Advertising Man
Any advertising, to be successful, must do these
things:
It must efficiently and economically sell the
goods advertised.
It must give the consumer something he needs
or wants, or a better article than some other at the
price, or it must supply an article more conveniently
or with better service.
Unless it does these things, advertising is not
economically sound and cannot command perma
nent success.
The plan of advertising, to accomplish these
ends, obviously must include much more than
merely printing a "clever ad."
Facts, Above All Else
Successful advertising is achieved by (1) getting
facts, (2) weighing facts, (3) acting in accordance
with facts.
The advertiser must know whether the public
has a conscious need for his goods, or whether the
public must be educated to that need. He must
know what others have done in similar lines in
order that he may take advantage of previous edu
cational work and that he may avoid the mistakes
of others. He must know whether a certain quality
or style or price will be most suitable to work out
his plan successfully.
He must know the habits of the people in buying
similar goods, and in what kind of stores they buy
them corner grocery stores, specialty shops, de
partment stores, drug stores, hardware stores.
He must know something of the possible mar
ket for his goods, how much of it he already has and
where it is. He must know what kind of people buy
his goods and how they may be reached, by both the
advertising and the actual distribution of the goods.
Sometimes an advertiser has concentrated very ex
pensive effort on one large city where it was not
worth while to make the effort as results subse
quently proved. In other cases advertisers have
scattered their efforts everywhere when it was im
possible to work more than certain sections profit
ably because of excessive freight charges or other
conditions that could and should have been known.
Sometimes the possible profits will not permit of
extensive advertising. Sometimes the goods are a
novelty that cannot endure, or a staple that does
not fill the need. These are but a few of the many
details that ought to be known before a single line
of advertising is written.
It is an astonishing truth that manufacturers
often lack vital information about their own busi
ness, and yet are eager to start advertising, blindly.
A Central Research Bureau
During the past decade it ha3 become increas
ingly evident that there should be some large cen
tral organization, having both the resources and
the confidence of the various branches of trade, to
gather and make available such information.
Recognizing this unfilled need, The Curtis Pub
lishing Company a few years ago established a
"Division of Commercial Research."
This Division is studying, one by one, the chief
industries, spending from six months to a year on
each. The method is to go out on the road and visit
hundreds of cities in all parts of the country, calling
on manufacturers, wholesalers, retail stores and con
sumers, and applying to the information obtained
by these interviews keen, commonsense methods of
analysis which will bring out the underlying facts.
The industries thus far covered and the time spent
on each are as follows :
Automobiles, trucks and motorcycles, and their
accessories. One year.
Department stores, with particular reference to
textiles and women's ready-to-wear clothing. One
year.
Agricultural implements. Six months.
For the past eight months the investigators
have been occupied with the vast subject of foods
and the problems and methods of grocery stores.
The conclusions, which will be ready probably next
summer, will be of great importance to all manufac
turers dealing with grocery stores.
In making these investigations the representa
tives of this Division up to date have traveled more
than 125,000 miles. The reports already made in
clude more than 8000 typewritten pages and 900
tables and drawn charts.
These reports contain some information given
in confidence, which cannot therefore be made pub
lic. The conclusions reached, however, are placed
at the disposal of any manufacturer or any adver
tising agent.
Without Bias
So far a? humanly possible this Division works
without bias. It is made up not of advertising men,
but of expert investigators trained in economics.
Its whole purpose is that advertising campaigns
may be built on facts not on impressions, not on
haphazard guesses, not on prejudice, not on favor
itism, but on facts.
Its work is of great importance to this Company,
because it makes our advice worthy of being sought
after by both manufacturers and advertising agents,
who have found it well worth while.
It serves also in preventing us from soliciting or
accepting advertising which is not sound from a
wasting time and from getting customers whom we
must inevitably lose, and with them lose prestige.
We are quite as eager to know conditions unfav
orable to advertising as we are to know conditions
which favor it. If any product ought not to be
advertised in our publications, we want to know it.
$25,000 Saved
For example, a manufacturer of woolens of a
special character wanted to spend $25,000 advertis
ing them through The Saturday Evening Post.
Applying the results of our textile investigations
to his product and his market, we pointed 'out
what he had not taken into account that the
specialized "market he hoped to reach demanded
several widely varying qualities. He could never
appeal to itNwith one line of goods. The "style
prejudice" was so strong that as soon as he had sold
one part of the market, the other part would reject
his line. And the very part he wanted most could
not be sold at all by advertising in our publications.
We therefore advised against the use of The Sat
urday Evening Post, and the manufacturer saved
$25,000.
This is but one of many cases.
A manufacturer of shirt waists wanted to
advertise in The Ladies' Home Journal. We were
obliged to tell this manufacturer that, because
of (1) the peculiar characteristics of his business,
(2) the general influences affecting his line, and (3)
the type of his competition, he could not advertise
successfully in The Journal with the amount of
money at his disposal. The cost would have been
prohibitive.
An advertisement announcing a new automobile
came to us recently through an advertising agency.
A car of the class proposed, sold by the methods
which this manufacturer had in mind, would prob
ably have been successful a few years ago. But our
knowledge of the development of the automobile
industry made us certain that if tried today it would
fail. We therefore declined the business.
We believe that in this instance, as in many
others, the information gained through commercial
research enabled us to prevent not only a loss to the
advertiser, but also injury to the reputation of the
advertising agency, and to our own reputation,
which would have been the inevitable outcome if
the advertising had been tried and proved unsuc
cessful. Good Business Sense
In other words, it is not merely good ethics. It
is good business as well. Advertising sometimes
has suffered through attempting the impossible. It
is to'the best advantage of every advertising organ
ization to urge that commercial information be
gathered and used as widely as possible in building
advertising on sound foundations and preventing
waste effort that it do its part to take the gamb
ling element out of business and to substitute
scientific method.
And this is to the best interest of the consumer
as well, because well-founded advertising means
better service and worth-while goods for all who
buy.
Our work in commercial research, therefore,
helps us to offer
(1) to manufacturers, practical advice;
(2) to advertising agents, helpful co-operation,
and
(3) to our readers, reasonable assurance that an
article advertised in any of our publications is being
sold by a plan that is economically sound.
Which means that such advertising is worthy of
your patronage.
Our reports on department stores, textiles, automobiles, agricultural Implements, etc., are not printed, but are In typewritten form at the adver
tising offices of this Company. Manufacturers and advertising men are cordially Invited to make appointments to call and Inspect these volumes.
The Curtis Publishing Company,
Independence Square, Philadelphia
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