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The Elementary Laws of Advertising And How to Use Them

Written by: Jim Straw

Article Overview: Most books on the subject of advertising are written by professional writers with little or no knowledge of business, or by advertising commission agents whose sole intent appears to be that of enticing unwary business men into buying more, and unnecessary, advertising from them.

The Elementary Laws of Advertising And How to Use Them

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Returning from a trip to see one of my old clients recently, my wife ... DeLores ... and I stopped to refresh ourselves. Browsing through the nearby antique (and junk) shop, I came across an 'old' book entitled, "The Elementary Laws of Advertising And How to Use Them" by Henry S. Bunting. -- Needless to say, I bought the book.

Although "The Elementary Laws of Advertising And How to Use Them" was published in 1913 ... that's 94 years ago, before World War I, back when the horse was still the most common form of personal transportation ... it is, in almost all respect, fundamentally identical in content to the books on advertising being written today.

In the opening of the book, Bunting decries the fact that ... even in 1913 ... most books on the subject of advertising are written by professional writers with little or no knowledge of business, or by advertising commission agents whose sole intent appears to be that of enticing unwary business men into buying more, and unnecessary, advertising from them.

Throughout the book, when Bunting notes an advertising myth, or fallacy, foisted upon the business community by less-than-knowledgeable writers, those advertising myths and fallacies are fundamentally identical to the self-same myths and fallacies you will still find repeated in most books about advertising ... especially college-level textbooks on the subject.

It's really amazing how little things have changed in the advertising community over the past 94 years. -- Then they wonder why a poor, uneducated farm boy (like me), can make millions from his advertising, while the over-edjerkcated advertising specialists are exceptionally lucky to be drawing paychecks. -- Could it be that people like me were never required to learn by rote the existing myths and fallacies and were, thereby, unable to use them to limit our marketing efforts? -- Oh well ...

Let's take a look at some of the things Bunting was teaching his readers in 1913. -- To that end, when I quote directly from Bunting's writings, I will put his text in quotes (" "). That way, you'll be able to tell when it's me writing and when I am quoting him.

To begin with, throughout the book, Bunting uses the terms "advertising" and "publicity" interchangeably, stating that "Advertising, in the modern" (1913) "meaning of the word, is publicity issued for the purpose of selling goods or services."

He also made the point that ...

"Whenever you issue a piece of publicity -- and whatever you put out as an advertisement -- your purpose is to sell goods. I may say your only purpose is to sell goods. You have no other purpose whatever. If your advertisement does not sell goods it is a failure, and the money it cost might just as well have been thrown away." (Ain't it the troot, even today?)

Upon reading Bunting's definition of advertising being "publicity issued for the purpose of selling goods or services," I had a flashback to the Creative Writing class I took in the second semester of my senior year in high school. (I got to take it, instead of the standard English class, because I had passed the English Competency Test ... required, at that time, to even apply for college.) Anywho ...

About half way through the course, the teacher ... Bazil Conard (war hero, African campaign) ... brought three newspaper ads to class. Our assignment was to write a newspaper article about the advertisers; using nothing but what we could learn from the ads. (I hadn't even remembered that assignment from my high school experiences until I read Bunting's definition of advertising.)

Thinking back, the teacher didn't really make a point of using the ads to write a newspaper article. It was just an exercise in being 'creative.' -- Now, it dawns on me that, if a journalist can't write an article about you, your company, your product, or your service, just by reading your advertising, your advertising probably isn't as effective as it could be. Therefore ...

If advertising is publicity used to sell your goods, then it stands to reason that 'publicity' must be an inherent characteristic of your advertising copy. -- I'm just now learning what Bunting was teaching 94 years ago ... even though I have used the technique unknowingly for years.

Now, back to Bunting's book ...

As I told you, Bunting's book is fundamentally identical to much of what is being written about advertising today. -- Fer instance ...

Today, anyone studying advertising soon learns the A.I.D.A. formula for copywriting. -- First you get the reader's Attention. Excite their Interest. Create a Desire for your product. Then, get the reader to take Action by ordering from you.

Bunting's formula was a little bit different - but - fundamentally the same.

Attention-Getting Power Plus Suasion Power Equals Selling Power

If you try to look-up the word 'suasion' in your computerized dictionary, chances are you won't find it. -- It's not in mine. -- However, if you go to your hardcopy dictionary, you will learn that the word 'suasion' is the root word for 'persuasion' ... the word more commonly used today. -- 'Suasion' is the 'act' - and - 'Persuasion' is the 'result' of the suasion.

Bunting put his formula this way, "The selling point of an advertisement lies at the intersection of its attention-getting power with the power of its suasion."

Here's a bit of what he had to say about ...

Attention-Getting Power

"The average business man, under the hypnotic influence of the advertising promoter, has been led to believe that if he can, by advertising, attract the attention of individuals without number, regardless of whom or of what they may be, the trick is done.

"If the mere attraction of attention were the only thing to be considered in successful advertising we would find here and there conspicuous examples of its force. Unfortunately, such examples are not to be found at all. As a matter of fact, the history of American business during the past 25 or 30 years," (1885 to 1913) "is cluttered with the wrecks and scrap-heaps of fortunes lost by the sole method of paying out money for attention-getting publicity that never even paid for itself. Look through the files of the magazines and you will find that 90 percent of the advertisers of even a comparatively few years ago have disappeared, and their places have been taken by new adventurers on very much the same road to extinction. These wrecks and scrap-heaps are the monuments of the advertising promoter's theory that merely attention-getting publicity pays."

Furthering those thoughts, Bunting asks, "Did it ever occur to you that you could get so much attention in publicity that the very power of the attention would kill you -- would reduce the selling power of your publicity to zero? But such is the cold fact."

Although the illustrations of getting too much attention Bunting used in his book were taken from his time, those illustrations easily equate to much of the TeeVee advertising we see today ... in those commercials which are so 'entertaining' you either can't remember what company ran the ad, or you can't figure out what they are selling - but - you do remember the commercial itself.

The same holds true in mailorder and internet marketing today, when so much emphasis is placed on just getting the recipient to open the envelope or visit the website, the true purpose ... selling ... becomes almost an afterthought. -- As in 1913, the advertiser who believes that just getting the recipient's attention will result in sales has bought into the rhetoric of those who have learned how to 'sell advertising' but have never learned to 'advertise to sell.'

Just as Bunting said, "The selling power of publicity varies inversely with its attention power when attention-getting is made the sole purpose of the publicity." -- "The purpose of all publicity is to sell goods." -- As true today as it was in 1913 ... getting 'traffic' is now the focus, rather than making sales and building a 'customer' base.

Of course, even if your advertising has all the Attention-Getting Power possible, you won't have much Selling Power unless it has an equal amount of ...

Suasion Power

As Bunting said, "You must not only attract to your goods the attention of the buyer of goods, but you must persuade him to buy by some argument, some device, some sort of suasion" (act) "that moves him to buy. It should be clear that much of the success of your publicity will depend upon its suasion value as well as upon its attention value. The two things are inseparably bound up with each other."

Suasion "may be an active suasion, in which the mind of the buyer is influenced through such agencies as salesmanship, circulars, catalogs, services of various kinds, general publicity, premiums, or other active campaigning to get or to hold trade; or it may be a passive suasion, in which the mind of the buyer is influenced by the quality or price of the goods, or other advantage or desirability."

As examples, Bunting told his readers that suasion is ...

"When a cereal company advertises that professors, preachers, and brainy men in general eat oats for breakfast; when a business concern ads 'established 1824' after its name; when the automobile maker tacks on the word 'noiseless' to the picture of his machine; when a hotel advertises itself as 'absolutely fireproof'; when the fountain beverage is tipped as 'refreshing'; when tobacco is described as the kind that 'does not burn the tongue'; when the food product is said to be prepared in a 'clean and sanitary factory'; when, in brief, any word or sign calculated to appreciate the goods in the mind of the reader of the advertisement is added to the main attention-getting device, the purpose of the addition is to persuade the reader to buy the goods, and suasion is the tool used to do so."

Bunting further advises his readers that ... "to sway preference it is necessary to let buyers -- when their attention has been sufficiently attracted -- know that there is advantage in preferring the brand that is advertised." -- And ...

"The selling power of publicity varies with the directness of its appeal to the individual who buys." -- "Issue no publicity that is not directly addressed to an individual."

Comments like that, and others throughout the book, lead me to believe that Bunting himself was involved in some form of ...

Selling By Mail

But, Bunting only directly addresses mailorder marketing once; in the chapter on "Media and Circulation," when he advises that ...

"The specificity of some media is elastic, while of others it is rigid. It is elastic only when the medium and its circulation are absolutely under the control of the advertiser -- when the advertiser can select the persons before whom the medium is placed.

"For example, if you are using circulars, letters, catalogs, or specialties, or novelties as your media, you can place your medium before persons selected by yourself, and thus make your circulation as specific or general as you wish. The medium is elastic. It need not always reach the same persons and the same number of persons whenever it is used.

"Of course this does not go at all into the difficulty of getting mail appeals read. The belief is general that more than 90 percent of all advertising letters, circulars and mailing cards are brushed into the wastebasket without more than a glance." (Even in 1913!) "But this misfortune for the advertiser has no bearing on this definition of 'elastic' media. The art developed in this book will enable the advertiser to devise his appeals so as to put them among that comparatively small percent which are noticed and read."

If those aren't the words of a veteran mailorder marketer, I don't know what could be. -- Beyond that, it was apparent he knew the great value of a customer base of known buyers, because he advised his readers that ... "There is no diminishing return for constantly maintained publicity."

In other words, you can never solicit your own list of known buyers too often. -- Even in 1913, the old myth of diminishing returns was, as it is now, just that ... a myth.

"The Elementary Laws of Advertising And How to Use Them" was published by The Novelty News Press, the publishing division of The Novelty News Laboratory of Business Economics, located (in 1913) at 215 S. Market St., Chicago ... where they also published "The Novelty News" ... a monthly magazine "to the business man who travels out of the rut of old-fogy business methods and wishes to cut a wide swath in his own field of trade". -- The subscription price was $2 a year ... $2.50 abroad. A single copy could be had for 20¢ in postage.

In the half-dozen 'sales pages' in the back of the book, they also provided a free service called the Buyers' Information & Wants Bureau to assist business men in locating the original manufacturer or importer of any premium article or merchandise "enabling you to save money by buying direct at factory prices." -- All a business man had to do was "state your needs as plainly as possible, enclose a stamp for reply".

From various comments in the book ... and the ad for "The Novelty News" ... it appears the company may have been selling advertising specialties and premiums, nationwide, by direct mail.

That was in 1913 ... it's still around today only it is now known as "Incentive" magazine ... http://www.incentivemag.com/

If you're interested, they have a FREE ezine subscription available.

---

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Article Tags: bunting, business community, business men, delores, elementary laws, fallacies, fallacy, junk shop, knowledge of business, knowledgeable writers, marketing efforts, myth, myths, paychecks, personal transportation, professional writers, sole intent, textbooks, world war



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