THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
215 
floist success. His flowers of today exist because he has had 
persistence and confidence in investing his money in good seeds 
or good plants, and in stimulating their growth by ideal growing 
conditions and cultivation. 
Identically the same logic should give him the same confidence 
in his advertising, for identically the same logic appleis. For 
example, greenhouses are to insure adequate production of flow¬ 
ers, in season and out of season, regardless of fluctuating 
weather conditions. The florist uses greenhouses to be sure of 
having his plants started growing right, and developed to the 
point where the rest is automatic. 
But the mere production of a large quantity of flowers will be 
entirely useless if such production cannot readily be sold. There 
is needed the greenhouse cultivation of sales which advertising 
means. Customers should be started growing by cultivation un¬ 
der glass, for the possibilities of developing sales of flowers are 
simply tremendous. Doubling the present business is only a be¬ 
ginning. 
Probably all that I have said is really unnecessary to say to a 
group of men who have done the excellent advertising that has 
been done. Your national magazine campaign is admirable. 
“Say it with Flowers” does actually make people think oftener 
about flowers. 
In heartily endorsing your magazine campaign, although I am 
a newspaper advertising manager, I am influenced perhaps by 
the fact that I was a magazine man for eleven years, and am 
still a rather large stockholder in one of the magazines you are 
advertising in. But I am influenced more by the same broad at¬ 
titude you yourselves have adopted in your association’s cam¬ 
paign to increase the sale of flowers for the benefit of every 
florist. 
And let me say right here that no matter how unselfish and 
altruistic you may feel in contributing to a campaign for the 
benefit of everybody in the business, there is absolutely no al¬ 
truism required to justify association advertising. You cannot 
increase the general buying demand for a product without speci¬ 
fically and proportionately helping every member of the group 
that makes and sells it. 
I am not in position to cite facts from y( ur own experience, be¬ 
cause I have not been on “the inside.” Ai "mber of florists have 
expressed themselves enthusiastically over what their member¬ 
ship in this association, and what this association’s advertis¬ 
ing have done for them. 
A campaign that closely parallels your own is that of the 
Paint and Varnish Association. Their joint advertising campaign 
started off on a big scale; the results were so noticeable that 
they doubled it the second year; and the third year their invest¬ 
ment in advertising was four times as large as the first year. 
There is absolutely no doubt or guesswork or altruism in 
their advertising. That campaign exists today—and is four 
times as large as when it started—solely because in three years 
it has become evident to every member of the Faint and Varnish 
Association that he gets his money’s worth in results. 
While you and every other florist will benefit by your joint ad¬ 
vertising even if you don’t do any advertising yourself, you will 
obviously benefit a lot more if you do. You will get more of the 
sale than others will, if you go after your share harder than 
others do. Every member of every city group which does joint 
advertising in the newspapers on the same “Say it with Fowers” 
plan will enjoy increased sales. And the greatest increases in 
sales will come to those individual members who go still further 
and follow up the joint newspaper campaign by individual news¬ 
paper advertising of their own. 
You don’t have to use big space or spend a lot of money until 
you’ve proved to your own satisfaction how well this advertising 
will pay you. A single terse, breezy sentence, set in large 
enough type to be easily read, will produce surprising results 
compared to its cost. The more frequently you run this copy, 
the more frequently you change it, the more you suggest speci¬ 
fic services flowers can render, the more effective your adver¬ 
tising will be. 
The facilities of making sales in your shop may be limited, but 
the sales you can make in the columns of a newspaper are lim¬ 
ited only by the circulation of the newspaper and by the effici¬ 
ency of your advertising. For sales are really made when the 
reader reads an advertisement that interests him. 
Legally and actually sales are a “meeting of minds;” sales are 
consummated when money passes and goods are taken, but 
sales are made when the reader’s mind reacts to what you sug¬ 
gest and says, “That’s so; that’s what I want to do.” 
Against the background of good newspaper advertising you 
can do effective follow-up by mail and telephone which you can t 
do when only a few people know who you are. Your newspaper 
advertising will not only make sales for you, but will make your 
shop so well known to everybody that every follow-up you make 
will be effective. 
The news columns of the same newspaper your advertising 
appears in, are full of opportunities for you to follow up—and 
the people whose names are mentioned have your name as a 
florist, fresh in their minds when you call up to suggest, for ex¬ 
ample, that you would consider it an honor to be given the or¬ 
der for the flowers for the forthcoming dinner mentioned in to¬ 
day’s paper, etc. 
Your card index of birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc., 
will produce far greater results if you are the best known florist 
in town. 
Since, in most cases, flowers are given, rather than bought for 
personal use, it’s a mighty factor in sales to have the recipient 
think more highly of the gift and of the giver for buying the 
flowers from the best-known florist in town. 
Now, one thing we hear a lot about is that business isn’t good, 
and that people aren’t buying so readily, and tha,t, therefore, it’s 
no time to spend money on advertising. I don’t doubt that a 
number of members of this society have serious doubts about 
the wisdom of spending money for advertising right now—at 
least until business gets better. 
Whenever any one says this, ask him if he drives a car. Ask 
him what he does when he comes to a hill. Ask him if he puts 
on the brakes and waits for the hill to recede. Not on your life, 
he “steps on the gas.” 
Perhaps he says he doesn’t drive a car—that he walks. Well, 
you can’t walk fast on a crowded sidewalk, but you can 
walk or run as fast as you please when there aren’t a lot of 
people in your way. 
The time to advertise hardest is when business is dullest— 
when it needs every possible help to send it over the hill. The 
time when advertising is most successful is when business is 
dull. The competition for the buyer’s money is less active. He 
isn’t appealed to so much to spend money for this, that or the 
other thing. Fewer sellers are aggressively seeking the atten¬ 
tion of buyers. 
The most successful advertisers in the country invariably push 
their advertising when business slackens. Hart, Schaffner & 
Marx were relatively small clothing manufacturers prior to the 
panic of 1907. In that year they amazed everybody by greatly 
increasing their advertising, when every competitor dropped out 
of the newspapers and magazines- What was the result? They 
had the field to themselves—and they’ve had it ever since as the 
greatest in the field. The supremacy they won in 1907 didn’t 
cost them anything but common sense and nerve; their timid 
competitors paid the advertising bills in business lost by them 
and gained by Hart, Schaffner & Marx. 
In this same panic of 1907, Wiliam Wrigley, then a relatively 
small chewing gum manufacturer in Chicago, followed Napo¬ 
leon’s tactics of attacking when everybody else was resting. He 
signed up for $1,500,000 of advertising when the country was in 
the midst of a depression which makes the present dull times 
look trivial in comparison. 
I don’t need to ask you, “Did it pay?” 
And Wrigley is doing the same thing today; he is doing t de¬ 
liberately. Eighteen months ago, when business was booming, 
Wrigley had his plant equipped and ready to turn out a new 
product, but he deliberately waited until last May when busi¬ 
ness slowed down a lot before he started advertising. He found 
in 1907 that advertising is most effective in dull times, and he 
wanted the advertisng of this new product to come when it 
would sell goods most easily. 
The Victor Talking Machine has greatly increased its adver¬ 
tising this year beyond that of any previous year—and its sales 
for 1921 (a year of so-called depression) are larger than for any 
period in its twenty-three years. 
The Eastman Kodak Co. faced a big slump in their business 
in 1921. They increased their advertising appropriation 50 per 
cent. Their sales for June were the biggest in their history. 
The American Radiator Co., The California Fruit Growers’ 
Exchange, The American Tobacco Co., The Fleischmann Yeast 
Co., and scores of others are demonstrating the strategy of driv¬ 
ing harder when others are holding back. 
And lest you should think that I am an advertising manager 
who doesn’t practice what he preaches, I’ll have to mention 
that the New York Evening Post is practicing what I am preach¬ 
ing—and its advertising gains for the past twelve months of de¬ 
flation are just a little short of 1,000,000 lines. 
If you will keep up your advertising—and do more of it—and 
make people think more about flowers, this will be the biggest 
and best business year the florists of the United States have 
ever known. 
Mr. Fernald was awarded a rising vote of thanks for his very 
fine paper. 
