HARDWOOD RECORD 



23 



ought to be. The two greatest factors iu distribution are sales- 

 manship and advertising. It is useless for business men to say 

 they do not believe in advertising. Everyone is an advertiser, 

 whether he wants to be or not. Our manners, our clothes, our 

 ai>iiearanee, our speech, everything that we do or say advertise 

 us and we cannot deny it. I have said that the two big factors 

 in the problem of distribution are advertising and salesmanship. 

 The relationship between the two, iu my opinion, is the closesl 

 relationship it is possible to have. It is closer than the team 

 under a single yoke; it i.s closer than friends; it is closer than 

 brothers; yes, it is closer than the relation between man and wife, 

 because there can never be a separation or divorce. Advertising 

 is salesmanship and salesmanship is advertising. Evei-y ad is a 

 salesman and every salesman is an ad. There is this difference. 

 Advertising is salesmanship plus publicity; salesmanship is adver- 

 tising plus getting the order signed. Advertising makes the 

 atmosphere of business, and the salesman follows and takes the 

 orilers. It is like a chemical combination. For instance, glycerine 

 in itself is perfectly harmless, 

 but combined with certain chem- 

 icals it forms one of the most 

 powerful explosives known. The 

 same is true of salesmanship 

 and advertising; it takes some- 

 thing to set them off, but it is 

 worth while. A man says, 

 "My business is so thoroughly 

 established I do not need to ad- 

 vertise it." It puts me in mind 



winking at a girl. He knows he 

 is winking at the girl, but she 

 doesn't. The close relationship 

 between the two is most noticed 

 when you get down to bedrock 

 of business and you find out 

 what is the foundation of all 

 business. Advertising and pub- 

 licity are the greatest builders 

 <if confidence known to the 

 business man. Big arlvertising 

 looks like big sales; it makes 

 the public familiar with the 

 seller of the goods and will in- 

 still confidence in those goods. 



Some people mistake advertis- I 



ing for merit. Please bear in 



mind that advertising never added one dollar to the value of any 

 article advertised. Advertising merely tells the value, it does not 

 make it. Goods must have merit in them to sell, and they must 

 also have merit when sold to stay sold. A sale does not end with 

 the making of it nowadays; it never ends so long as the man is 

 using the article you sell. I think most advertising men I have 

 seen who do things realize what advertising needs most. There 

 are hundreds and thousands of people in this country who do not 

 believe in advertising as some of us do. They think because some 

 people take pages of magazines that cost from $400 to $3,600 a 

 page, the}- must be charging higher prices than they otherwise 

 would. AVe know just the opposite is true. Through advertising 

 we are enabled to build up volume, and that volume enables us 

 to cut expense, and the more we are enabled to sell, the more 

 advertising we should do. But people need to be told of that. 

 because lots of people still do not believe in it. The object of 

 salesmanship and advertising is to distribute goods at a profit. 

 Anybody can give away goods, but it takes a salesman to sell 

 them. One of the oldest chestnuts among advertising men — if you 

 can call it such — is the one they use in every argument: "What 

 you need is to conduct a campaign of education." I think we 

 ought to forget that once and for all. I would like to know when 



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we ha\e all of the people educated. All advertising is of an educa- 

 tional character; if it is not it is not advertising at all. I think 

 advertising men, like all other men, are made as well as born. 

 The thing that hampers men, that holds them back more than 

 anything else, is the doubt of their own ability. They praise what 

 they consider great genius or great ability in some other man, 

 when perhaps they possess that same ability. I do not think 

 it is going too far — and I do not say it to you only, I have said 

 it to other people, too — but I think there is enough ability in this 

 room to take care of almost any crisis this country could ever 

 have. There is more latent ability in all men than we know of, 

 and the only reason they do not forge faster to the front is 

 because they are not able to recognize it. Fifty years ago this 

 country confronted a crisis, and when the crisis came the country 

 had a leader, but a year or two before it came the man had not 

 been picked, but he had it in him all the time to become a leader. 

 Let us preach the doctrine of "made" men as well as "born" 

 men. It is easier to make goods than to sell them. I have been 



in the advertising business all 

 my life, but it took me some 

 time to find that out. Any man 

 with money can buy machinery 

 and hire men to run it and make 

 goods, but it does not follow 

 that because he can do that 

 that he can sell those goods. 

 His money is of no use if he 

 cannot sell the goods after they 

 are made. It took me some 

 time to find out that the mak- 

 ing of the goods is the least. 

 When you are manufacturing 

 goods you are dealing both with 

 men and metals, and you can 

 put a thousand more men to 

 work and make more goods, but . 

 when you cross the line and at- 

 tempt to sell those goods you 

 will meet a different proposi- 

 tion. When you make a sale of 

 anything, whether in a retail 

 store or on the road, no matter 

 what it may be, that sale does 

 not first take place in the pock- 

 etbook, it does not first take 

 place in the order book, it does 

 not first take place in the check 

 book, but every sale takes place, whether it be a paper of pins or 

 a house and lot, in the mind of the man who buys the goods. 

 Therefore we put salesmanship on that one basis. A lawyer is as 

 much a salesman as a business man, because when he is in court 

 he wants to sell his side of the case to the judge and jury, and 

 he is the best salesman because he goes at it scientifically. 



If I were asked to define salesmanship in one sentence, I would 

 say it was nothing more or less than making the other fellow feel 

 as you do about the goods you have to sell. Advertising anc? 

 salesmanship are the connecting link, and always will be, betweel 

 the invention and use of any article. The best invention the 

 world has ever seen would have been worthless if the man had 

 not told anybody else about it, if he had not advertised and given 

 the widest publicity to his invention. Every patent this country 

 grants is granted on the theory that the man who produced the 

 invention is going to be a benefactor of humanity, and he is there- 

 fore given seventeen years' use of his invention. So advertising 

 and salesmanship have pushed this world ahead faster than any- 

 thing else. Advertising is a process of salesmanship. We hear it 

 said that "advertising is salesmanship on paper." That is partly 

 true, but it is not wholly true. Advertising is more than sales- 

 manship; it is salesmanship plus publicity. A salesman can talk 



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