The Clock That Had No Hands, and Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising

Part 1

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The Clock that Had no Hands

And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising

By Herbert Kaufman

New York George H. Doran Company

COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

COPYRIGHT, 1912 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS [W·D·O] NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A

Contents

PAGE

The Clock that Had no Hands 1

The Cannon that Modernized Japan 7

The Tailor who Paid too Much 13

The Man who Retreats before His Defeat 19

The Dollar that Can't be Spent 25

The Pass of Thermopylae 31

The Perambulating Showcase 37

How Alexander Untied the Knot 43

If It Fits You, Wear this Cap 49

You Must Irrigate Your Neighborhood 55

Cato's Follow-up System 61

How to Write Retail Advertising Copy 67

The Difference between Amusing and Convincing 75

Some Don'ts when You Do Advertise 79

The Doctor whose Patients Hang On 85

The Horse that Drew the Load 91

The Cellar Hole and the Sewer Hole 97

The Neighborhood of Your Advertising 103

Part 2

The Mistake of the Big Steak 109

The Omelette Soufflé 113

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

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

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."

Part 3

"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.

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