Advertising Service

Chapter Three   

Offer Service

     Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are.  
The care nothing about your interests or your profit.  They seek 
service for themselves.  Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and 
a costly mistake in advertising.  Ads say in effect , "Buy my 
brand.  Give me the trade you give to others.  Let me have the 
money."  That is not a popular appeal.
     

     The best ads ask no one to buy.  That is useless.  Often they 
do not quote a price.  They do not say that dealers handle the 
product.
     

     The ads are based entirely on service.  They offer wanted 
information.  They site advantages to users.  Perhaps they offer a 
sample, or to but the first package, or to send something on 
approval, so  the customer may prove the claims without any
cost or risks.  
     

     Some of these ads seem altruistic.  But they are based on the 
knowledge of human nature.  The writers know how people are led to 
buy.

     Here again is salesmanship.  The good salesman does not merely 
cry a name.  He doesn't say, "Buy my article."  He pictures the 
customer's side of his service until the natural result is to buy.
     

     A brush maker has some 2,000 canvassers who sells brushes from 
house to house.  He is enormously successful in a line which would 
seem very difficult.  And it would be for his men asked the 
housewives to buy.
     

     But they don't.  They go to the door and say, "I was sent here 
to give you a brush.  I have samples here and I want you to take 
your choice."
     

     The housewife is all smiles and attention.  In picking out one 
brush she sees several she wants.  She is also anxious to 
reciprocate the gift.  So the salesman gets an order.
     

     Another concern sells coffee, etc., by wagons in some 500 
cities.  The man drops in with a half-pound of coffee and says,  
"Accept this package and try it.  I'll come back in a few days to 
ask you how you liked it."
     

     Even when he comes back he doesn't ask for an order.  He 
explains that he wants to give the women a fine kitchen utensil.  
It isn't free, but if she likes the coffee he will credit five 
cents on each pound she buys until she has paid for the article.  
Always some service.
     

     The maker of the electric sewing machine motor found 
advertising difficult.  So, on good advice, he ceased soliciting a 
purchase.  He offered to send to any home, through any dealer, a 
motor for one week's use.  With it would come a man to show how to 
operate.  "Let us help you for a week without cost or obligation," 
said the ad.  Such an offer was resistless, and about nine in ten 
of the trials led to sales.
     

     So in many, many lines.  Cigar makers send out boxes to anyone 
and say, "Smoke ten, then keep them or return them, as you wish."
     

     Makers of books, typewriters, washing machines, kitchen 
cabinets, vacuum sweepers, etc., send out their products without 
any prepayment.  They say, "Use them a week, then do as you wish."  
Practically all merchandise sold by mail is sent subject
to return.
     

     These are all common principles of salesmanship.  The most 
ignorant peddler applies them.  Yet the salesman-in-print very 
often forgets them.  He talks about his interest.  He blazons a 
name, as though that was of importance.  His phrase is, "Drive 
people to the stores," and that is his attitude in everything he 
says.
     

     People can be coaxed but not driven.  Whatever they do they do 
to please themselves.  Many fewer mistakes would be made in 
advertising if these facts were never forgotten.

Return to Book Intro and Chapter Index:  Scientific Advertising

Continue to next Chapter: Advertising Mail Order