TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



133 



article or some other grade of goods for the particular brand which you 

 are advertising, your advertising campaign is the deadest thing that 

 ever happened. 



In the last three or four years, more particularly the last two years, 

 there have been a number of weak-kneed attempts to advertise California 

 products in the East. Most of them have been signal failures, simply 

 because advertisers thought they were going.to make a fortune by merely 

 taking an inch or two of space in Eastern publications at $5 more or 

 less per line. This good money was paid out to induce the retail buyer 

 to call on the retail dealer in the hopes that the retail dealer would call 

 on his jobber, whereat the jobber would get excited and at once telegraph 

 a big order to California. 



Some advertising men call this system of working, creating a demand 

 or forcing the dealer. I call it " blowing your money." Before a Cali- 

 fornia product can be successfully advertised, it must be fairly well 

 grounded in the markets in which you are to operate. 



Take, for instance, McClure's Magazine or the Delineator, or any 

 other publication carrying a large volume of food-product advertising. 

 Suppose you put your advertisement in these publications. Your goods 

 are in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other jobbing 

 centers, or you have two or three good travelers booking orders from 

 town to town. Can't you see that under those conditions you have 

 more than a righting chance for success? And can't you see that without 

 the goods at the strategic points or without the traveler to blaze the way, 

 your efforts are foreordained to defeat? The success of any advertising 

 depends upon who uses it, when and how it is used. Those who have 

 experience, money, confidence, and a good article to sell are in love with 

 it. Those who have used it to head off competition and get the best of 

 the other fellow, have no use for it. 



Mr. Armour says the time has come when advertising must be done. 

 Mr. Armour made a success by starting with $10,000. Mr. Post made 

 a success by starting without a cent. The question of capital in an 

 advertising campaign, while an important one, is not the paramount 

 issue. A good product, a good package, a good organization, and good 

 common business sense, combined with enthusiasm in your proposition, 

 are more vital than money. 



A bright writer has said " that an advertisement is a thing that repre- 

 sents a man's goods and business at a place where the man and goods 

 are not." There are just millions and millions of places in the United 

 States where our goods are not and where California products should be 

 represented. 



PRESIDENT COOPER. The papers which have been read are now 

 before the Convention for discussion. 



