The Clock that Had
no Hands

Contents

The Clock that Had no Hands

The Clock that Had no Hands

Newspaper advertising is to business, what hands are to a clock. It is a direct and certain means of letting the public know what you are doing. In these days of intense and vigilant commercial contest, a dealer who does not advertise is like a clock that has no hands. He has no way of recording his movements. He can no more expect a twentieth century success with nineteenth century methods, than he can wear the same sized shoes as a man, which fitted him in his boyhood.

His father and mother were content with neighborhood shops and bobtail cars; nothing better could be had in their day. They were accustomed to seek the merchant instead of being sought by him. They dealt “around the corner” in one-story shops which depended upon the immediate friends of the dealer for support. So long as the city was made up of such neighborhood units, each with a full outfit of butchers, bakers, clothiers, jewelers, furniture dealers and shoemakers, it was possible for the proprietors of these little establishments to exist and make a profit.

But as population increased, transit facilities spread, sections became specialized, block after block was entirely devoted to stores, and mile after mile became solely occupied by homes.

The purchaser and the storekeeper grew farther and farther apart. It was necessary for the merchant to find a substitute for his direct personality, which no longer served to draw customers to his door. He had to have a bond between the commercial center and the home center. Rapid transit eliminated distance but advertising was necessary to inform people where he was located and what he had to sell. It was a natural outgrowth of changed conditions—the beginning of a new era in trade which no longer relied upon personal acquaintance for success.

Something more wonderful than the fabled philosopher's stone came into being, and the beginnings of fortunes which would pass the hundred million mark and place tradesmen's daughters upon Oriental thrones grew from this new force. Within fifty years it has become as vital to industry as steam to commerce.

Advertising is not a luxury nor a debatable policy. It has proven its case. Its record is traced in the skylines of cities where a hundred towering buildings stand as a lesson of reproach to the men who had the opportunity but not the foresight, and furnish a constant inspiration to the young merchant at the threshold of his career.

The Cannon that Modernized Japan

The Cannon that Modernized Japan

Business is no longer a man to man contact, in which the seller and the buyer establish a personal bond, any more than battle is a hand-to-hand grapple wherein bone and muscle and sinew decide the outcome. Trade as well as war has changed aspect—both are now fought at long range.

Just as a present day army of heroes would have no opportunity to display the individual valor of its members, just so a merchant who counts upon his direct acquaintanceship for success, is a relic of the past—a business dodo.

Japan changed her policy of exclusion to foreigners, after a fleet of warships battered down the Satsuma fortifications. The Samurai, who had hitherto considered their blades and bows efficient, discovered that one cannon was mightier than all the swords in creation—if they could not get near enough to use them. Japan profited by the lesson. She did not wait until further ramparts were pounded to pieces but was satisfied with her one experience and proceeded to modernize her methods.

The merchant who doesn't advertise is pretty much in the same position as that in which Japan stood when her eyes were opened to the fact that times had changed. The long range publicity of a competitor will as surely destroy his business as the cannon of the foreigners crumbled the walls of Satsuma. Unless you take the lesson to heart, unless you realize the importance of advertising, not only as a means of extending your business but for defending it as well, you must be prepared to face the consequences of a folly as great as that of a duelist who expects to survive in a contest in which his adversary bears a sword twice the length of his own.

Don't think that it's too late to begin because there are so many stores which have had the advantage of years of cumulative advertising. The city is growing. It will grow even more next year. It needs increased trading facilities just as it's hungry for new neighborhoods.

But it will never again support neighborhood stores. Newspaper advertising has reduced the value of being locally prominent, and five cent street car fares have cut out the advantage of being “around the corner.” A store five miles away, can reach out through the columns of the daily newspaper and draw your next door neighbor to its aisles, while you sit by and see the people on your own block enticed away, without your being able to retaliate or secure new customers to take their place.

It is not a question of your ability to stand the cost of advertising but of being able to survive without it. The thing you have to consider is not only an extension of your business but of holding what you already have.

Advertising is an investment, the cost of which is in the same proportion to its returns as seeds are to the harvest. And it is just as preposterous for you to consider publicity as an expense, as it would be for a farmer to hesitate over purchasing a fertilizer, if he discovered that he could profitably increase his crops by employing it.

The Tailor who Paid too Much

The Tailor who Paid too Much

I was buying a cigar last week when a man dropped into the shop and after making a purchase told the proprietor that he had started a clothes shop around the corner and quoted him prices, with the assurance of best garments and terms.

After he left the cigar man turned to me and said:

“Enterprising fellow, that, he'll get along.”

“But he won't,” I replied, “and, furthermore, I'll wager you that he hasn't the sort of clothes shop that will enable him to.”

“What made you think that?” queried the man behind the counter.

“His theories are wrong,” I explained; “he's relying upon word of mouth publicity to build up his business and he can't interview enough individuals to compete with a merchant, who has sense enough to say the same things he told you, to a hundred thousand men, while he is telling it to one. Besides, his method of advertising is too expensive. Suppose he sees a hundred persons every day. First of all, he is robbing his business of its necessary direction and besides, he is spending too much to reach every man he solicits.”

“I don't quite follow you.”

“Well, as the proprietor of a clothes shop his own time is so valuable that I am very conservative in my estimate when I put the cost of his soliciting at five cents a head.

“Now, if he were really able and clever he would discover that he can talk to hundreds of thousands of people at a tenth of a cent per individual. There is not a newspaper in town the advertising rate of which is $1.00 per thousand circulation, for a space big enough in which to display what he said to you.”

“I never looked at it that way,” said the cigar man.

It's only “the man who hasn't looked at it that way,” who hesitates for an instant over the advisability and profitableness of newspaper publicity.

Newspaper advertising is the cheapest channel of communication ever established by man. A thousand letters with one-cent stamps, will easily cost fifteen dollars and not one envelope in ten will be opened because the very postage is an invitation to the wastebasket.

If there were anything cheaper rest assured that the greatest merchants in America would not spend individual sums ranging up to half a million dollars a year and over, upon this form of attracting trade.

The Man who Retreats before His Defeat

The Man who Retreats before His Defeat

Advertising isn't magic. There is no element of the black art about it. In its best and highest form it is plain talk, sane talk—selling talk. Its results are in proportion to the merit of the subject advertised and the ability with which the advertising is done.

There are two great obstacles to advertising profit, and both of them arise from ignorance of the real functions and workings of publicity.

The first is to advertise promises which will not be fulfilled,—because all that advertising can do when it accomplishes most, is to influence the reader to investigate your claims.

If you promise the earth and deliver the moon, advertising will not pay you.

If you bring men and women to your store on pretense and fail to make good, advertising will have harmed you, because it has only drawn attention to the fact that you are to be avoided.

It is as unjust to charge advertising with failure under these conditions, as it would be for your neighbor to rob a bank and make you responsible for his misdeed. In brief, advertised dishonesty is even more profitless than unexploited deception.

The other great error in advertising is to expect more out of advertising than there is in it.

Advertising is seed which a merchant plants in the confidence of the community. He must allow time for it to grow. Every successful advertiser has to be patient. The time that it takes to arrive at results rests entirely with the ability and determination devoted to the work. But you cannot turn back when you have traveled half way and declare that the path is wrong.

You can't advertise for a week, and because your store isn't crowded, say it hasn't paid you. It takes a certain period to attract the attention of readers. Everybody doesn't see what you print the first time it appears. More will notice your copy the second day, a great many more at the end of a month.

You cannot expect to win the confidence of the community to the same degree that other men have obtained it, without taking pretty much the same length of time that they did. But you can cut short the period between your introduction to your reader and his introduction to your counters, by spending more effort in preparing your copy and displaying a greater amount of convincingness.

You mustn't act like the little girl who sowed a garden and came out the next day expecting to find it in full bloom. Her father had to explain to her that plants require roots and that, although she could not see what was going on, the seeds were doing their most important work just before the flowers showed above ground.

So advertising is doing its most important work before the big results eventuate, and to abandon the money which has been invested just before results arrive, is not only foolish but childish. It would be just as logical for a farmer to desert his fields because he cannot harvest his corn a week after he planted it.

Advertising does not require faith—merely common sense. If it is begun in doubt and relinquished before normal results can be reasonably looked for, the fault does not lie with the newspaper nor with publicity—the blame is solely on the head of the coward who retreated before he was defeated.

The Dollar that Can't be Spent

The Dollar that Can't be Spent

Every dollar spent in advertising is not only a seed dollar which produces a profit for the merchant, but is actually retained by him even after he has paid it to the publisher.

Advertising creates a good will equal to the cost of the publicity.

Advertising really costs nothing. While it uses funds it does not use them up. It helps the founder of a business to grow rich and then keeps his business alive after his death.

It eliminates the personal equation. It perpetuates confidence in the store and makes it possible for a merchant to withdraw from business without having the profits of the business withdrawn from him. It changes a name to an institution—an institution which will survive its builder.

It is really an insurance policy which costs nothing—pays a premium each year instead of calling for one and renders it possible to change the entire personnel of a business without disturbing its prosperity.

Advertising renders the business stronger than the man—independent of his presence. It permanentizes systems of merchandising, the track of which is left for others to follow.

A business which is not advertised must rely upon the personality of its proprietor, and personality in business is a decreasing factor. The public does not want to know the man who owns the store—it isn't interested in him but in his goods. When an unadvertised business is sold it is only worth as much as its stock of goods and its fixtures. There is no good will to be paid for—it does not exist—it has not been created. The name over the door means nothing except to the limited stream of people from the immediate neighborhood, any of whom could tell you more about some store ten miles away which has regularly delivered its shop news to their breakfast table.

It is as shortsighted for a man to build a business which dies with his death or ceases with his inaction, as it is unfair for him not to provide for the continuance of its income to his family.

The Pass of Thermopylae

The Pass of Thermopylae

Xerxes once led a million soldiers out of Persia in an effort to capture Greece, but his invasion failed utterly, because a Spartan captain had entrenched a hundred men in a narrow mountain pass, which controlled the road into Lacedaemon. The man who was first on the ground had the advantage.

Advertising is full of opportunities for men who are first on the ground.

There are hundreds of advertising passes waiting for some one to occupy them. The first man who realizes that his line will be helped by publicity, has a tremendous opportunity. He can gain an advantage over his competitors that they can never possess. Those who follow him must spend more money to equal his returns. They must not only invest as much, to get as much, but they must as well, spend an extra sum to counteract the influence that he has already established in the community.

Whatever men sell, whether it is actual merchandise or brain vibrations, can be more easily sold with the aid of advertising. Not one half of the businesses which should be exploited are appearing in the newspapers. Trade grows as reputation grows and advertising spreads reputation.

If you are engaged in a line which is waiting for an advertising pioneer, realize what a wonderful chance you have of being the first of your kind to appeal directly to the public. You stand a better chance of leadership than those who have handicapped their strength, by permitting you to get on the ground before they could outstrip you. You gain a prestige that those who follow you, must spend more money to counteract.

If your particular line is similar to some other trade or business which has already been introduced to the reading public, it's up to you to start in right now and join your competitors in contesting for the attention of the community. The longer you delay the more you decrease your chances of surviving. Every man who outstrips you is another opponent, who must be met and grappled with, for the right of way.

The Perambulating Showcase

The Perambulating Showcase

The newspaper is a huge shop window, carried about the city and delivered daily into hundreds of thousands of homes, to be examined at the leisure of the reader. This shop window is unlike the actual plate glass showcase only in one respect—it makes display of descriptions instead of articles.

You have often been impressed by the difference between the decorations of two window-trimmers, each of whom employed the same materials for his work. The one drew your attention and held it by the grace and cleverness and art manifested in his display. The other realized so little of the possibilities in the materials placed at his disposal, that unless some one called your attention to his mediocrities you would have gone on unconscious of their existence.

An advertiser must know that he gets his results in accordance with the skill exercised in preparing his verbal displays. He must make people stop and pause. His copy has to stand out.

He must not only make a show of things that are attractive to the eye but are attractive to the people's needs, as well.

The window-trimmer must not make the mistake of thinking that the showiest stocks are the most salable. The advertiser must not make the mistake of thinking that the showiest words are the most clinching.

Windows are too few in number to be used with indiscretion. The good merchant puts those goods back of his plate glass which nine people out of ten will want, once they have seen them.

The good advertiser tells about goods which nine readers out of ten will buy, if they can be convinced.

Newspaper space itself is only the window, just as the showcase is but a frame for merchandise pictures. A window on a crowded street, in the best neighborhood, where prosperous persons pass continually, is more desirable, than one in a cheap, sparsely settled neighborhood. An advertisement in a newspaper with the most readers and the most prosperous ones, possesses a great advantage over the same copy, in a medium circulating among persons who possess less means. It would be foolish for a shop to build its windows in an alley-way—and just as much so to put its advertising into newspapers which are distributed among “alley-dwellers.”

How Alexander Untied the Knot

How Alexander Untied the Knot

Alexander the Great was being shown the Gordian Knot. “It can't be untied,” they told him; “every man who tried to do so, failed.”

But Alexander was not discouraged because the rest had flunked. He simply realized that he would have to go at it in a different way. And instead of wasting time with his fingers, he drew his sword and slashed it apart.

Every day a great business general is shown some knot which has proven too much for his competitors, and he succeeds, because he finds a way to cut it. The fumbler has no show so long as there is a brother merchant who doesn't waste time trying to accomplish the impossible—who takes lessons from the failures about him and avoids the methods which were their downfall.

The knottiest problems in trade are:

• 1—The problem of location.
• 2—The problem of getting the crowds.
• 3—The problem of keeping the crowds.
• 4—The problem of minimizing fixed expenses.
• 5—The problem of creating a valuable good will.

None of these knots is going to be untied by fumbling fingers. They are too complicated. They're all inextricably involved—so twisted and entangled that they can't be solved singly—like the Gordian knot they must be cut through at one stroke. And you can't cut the knot with anything but advertising—because:

• 1—A store that is constantly before the people makes its own neighborhood.
• 2—Crowds can be brought from anywhere by daily advertising.
• 3—Customers can always be held by inducements.
• 4—Fixed expenses can only be reduced by increasing the volume of sales.
• 5—Good will can only be created through publicity.

Advertising is breeding new giants every year and making them more powerful every hour. Publicity is the sustaining food of a powerful store and the only strengthening nourishment for a weak one. The retailer who delays his entry into advertising must pay the penalty of his procrastination by facing more giant competitors as each month of opportunity slips by.

Personal ability as a close purchaser and as a clever seller, doesn't count for a hang, so long as other men are equally well posted and wear the sword of publicity to boot. They are able to tie your business into constantly closer knots, while you cannot retaliate, because there is no knot which their advertising cannot cut for them.

Yesterday you lost a customer—today they took one—tomorrow they'll get another. You cannot cope with their competition because you haven't the weapon with which to oppose it. You can't untie your Gordian knot because it can't be untied—you've got to cut it.

You must become an advertiser or you must pay the penalty of incompetence.

You not only require the newspaper to fight for a more hopeful tomorrow, but to keep today's situation from becoming hopeless.

If It Fits You, Wear this Cap

If It Fits You, Wear this Cap

Advertising isn't a crucible with which lazy, bigoted and incapable merchants can turn incompetency into success—but one into which brains and tenacity and courage can be poured and changed into dollars. It is only a short cut across the fields—not a moving platform. You can't “get there” without “going some.”

It's a game in which the worker—not the shirker—gets rich.

By its measurement every man stands for what he is and for what he does, not for what he was and what he did.

Every day in the advertising world is another day and has to be taken care of with the same energy as its yesterday.

The quitter can't survive where the plugger has the ghost of a chance.

Advertising doesn't take the place of business talent or business management. It simply tells what a business is and how it is managed. The snob whose father created and who is content to live on what was handed to him, can't stand up against the man who knows he must build for himself.

What makes you think that you are entitled to prosper as well as a competitor who works twice as hard for his prosperity?

Why should as many people deal at your store, as patronize a shop that makes an endeavor to get their trade and shows them that it is worth while to come to its doors?

Why should a newspaper send as many customers to you, in half the time it took to fill an establishment which advertised twice as long and paid twice as much for its publicity?

This is the day when the best man wins—after he proves that he is the best man—when the best store wins, when it has shown that it is the best store—when the best goods win, after they've been demonstrated to be the best goods.

If you want the plum you can't get it by lying under the tree with your mouth open waiting for it to drop—too many other men are willing to climb out on the limb and risk their necks in their eagerness to get it away from you.

It is a man's game—this advertising—just hanging on and tugging and straining all the time to get and keep ahead. It is the finite expression of the law of Competition, which sits in blind-folded justice over the markets of the world.

You Must Irrigate Your Neighborhood

You Must Irrigate Your Neighborhood

Half a century ago there were ten million acres of land, within a thousand miles of Chicago, upon which not even a blade of grass would grow. Today upon these very deserts are wonderful orchards and tremendous wheatfields. The soil itself was full of possibilities. What the land needed was water. In time there came farmers who knew that they could not expect the streams to come to them, and so they dug ditches and led the water to their properties from the surrounding rivers and lakes; they tilled the earth with their brains as well as their plows—they became rich through irrigation.

Advertising has made thousands of men rich, just because they recognized the possibilities of utilizing the newspapers to bring streams of buyers into neighborhoods that could be made busy locations by irrigation—by drawing people from other sections.

The successful retailer is the man who keeps the stream of purchasers coming his way. It isn't the spot itself that makes the store pay—it's the man who makes the spot pay. Centers of trade are not selected by the public—they are created by the force which controls the public—the newspapers.

New neighborhoods for business are being constantly built up by men who have located themselves in streets which they have changed from deserted by-ways into teeming, jostling thoroughfares, through advertising irrigation.

The storekeeper who whines that his neighborhood holds him back is squinting at the truth—he is hurting the neighborhood.

If it lacks streams of buyers, he can easily enough secure them by reaching out through the columns of the daily and inducing people from other sections to come to him. Every time he influences a customer of a competitor he is not only irrigating his own field but is diverting the streams upon which a non-advertising merchant depends for existence. Men and women who live next door to a shop that does not plead for their custom will eventually be drawn to an establishment miles away because they have been made to believe in some advantage to be gained thereby.

The circulation of every daily is nothing less than a reservoir of buyers, from which shoppers stream in the direction that promises the most value for the least money.

The magic development of the desert lands, has its parallel in merchandising of men who consider the newspaper an irrigating power which can make two customers grow where one grew before.

Cato's Follow-up System

Cato's Follow-up System

If a man lambasted you on the eye and walked away and waited a week before he repeated the performance, he wouldn't hurt you very badly. Between attacks you would have an opportunity to recover from the effect of the first blow.

But if he smashed you and kept mauling, each impact of his fist would find you less able to stand the hammering, and a half-dozen jabs would probably knock you down.

Now advertising is, after all, a matter of hitting the eye of the public. If you allow too great an interval to elapse between insertions of copy the effect of the first advertisement will have worn away by the time you hit again. You may continue your scattered talks over a stretch of years, but you will not derive the same benefit that would result from a greater concentration. In other words, by appearing in print every day, you are able to get the benefit of the impression created the day before, and as each piece of copy makes its appearance, the result of your publicity on the reader's mind is more pronounced—you mustn't stop short of a knock-down impression.

Persistence is the foundation of advertising success. Regularity of insertion is just as important as clever phrasing. The man who hangs on is the man who wins out. Cato the Elder is an example to every merchant who uses the newspapers and should be an inspiration to every storekeeper who does not. For twenty years he arose daily in the Roman senate and cried out for the destruction of Carthage. In the beginning he found his conferees very unresponsive. But he kept on every day, month after month and year after year, sinking into the minds of all the necessity of destroying Carthage, until he set all the senate thinking upon the subject and in the end Rome sent an army across the Mediterranean and ended the reign of the Hannibals and Hamilcars over northern Africa. The persistent utterances of a single man did it.

The history of every mercantile success is parallel. The advertiser who does not let a day slip by without having his say, is bound to be heard and have his influence felt. Every insertion of copy brings stronger returns, because it has the benefit of what has been said before, until the public's attention is like an eye that has been so repeatedly struck, that the least touch of suggestion will feel like a blow.