SELL* ING LUMBER 253 



Reaching the Consumer 



By Hugh McVey 



Business Manager, "Successful Farming" 

 Des Moines, la. 



Advertising is a subject that is treated in a good many dif- 

 ferent ways. You might ask ten speakers to talk on the sub- 

 ject of advertising here this morning and they would not re- 

 peat on each other. It reminds me of the story of two maid- 

 ens two women about forty years old. One of them had 

 been married and was being married again quite successfully. 

 The other lady had never been married, and she went to her 

 friend and said, "How is it, Mary, that you have had your second 

 chance to be married and I haven't had any?" "Well," she said, 

 "it is sort of this way: It is not in the form, or in the hang of 

 the dress, but it is by the 'come-hither' of the eye that we women p m ^. 

 get the men." (Laughter.) That pretty nearly covers every- of Advertising 

 thing. The reaching out through the copy, and the billboard 

 and the circular is the way to get hold of the consumer, and it is 

 very, very hard to define. I want to review advertising a little 

 bit for you; you know we all say it pays to advertise. Some 

 years ago that is about all any of us knew about it, and I don't 

 know that we know much more yet; but advertising has followed 

 a very definite evolution. We have gone through the bulk circu- 

 lation idea that is, if a man got his ad to enough people and got 

 in a big enough medium he would win. We got over to the 

 question of copy. One man alone is supposed to draw fifty 

 thousand dollars a year for writing copy. And then we got to 

 the place where we found that copy didn't put the sale across. 

 And then we went to the consumer with the anti-substitution 

 campaign. You remember that the magazines several years ago 

 made a great mistake. You would never recognize it as a mis- 

 take, but it was a mistake to go to the consumer and tell the con- 

 sumer that the dealer had no right to substitute. That was wav- 

 ing a red flag in the face of the dealer. Now, the dealer can 

 substitute, nine times out of ten, especially in a small town where 

 he knows his trade ; and we didn't get anywhere with that idea. 

 And then we came along with this "true" business, and we got 



