ube ffiational IRurscryman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXIX. HATBORO, PENNA., OCTOBER 1921 No. 10 
Nursery Advertising 
(By John Watson, Princeton, New Jersey, Ex-President of the American Association of Nurserymen, at the 
Convention of the Southern Nurserymen s Association in Chattanooga, September 7.) 
Let me say right off that my idea in coming here is not 
to tell you something. I don’t know enough about ad¬ 
vertising nor about the nursery business either, to pose 
as a teacher; rather I am here to consider a subject that 
we are all interested in, to point out some things done, to 
ask questions and to suggest some methods that are fol¬ 
lowed by other advertisers. Maybe we can find some 
new ways and possibly better ways. 
Now, what is advertising? And what is its purpose? 
It is to sell something, isn’t it? So I would say that ad¬ 
vertising is what you do and say that establishes a 
friendly relationship that results in sales. That rela¬ 
tionship has to be based on confidence and good-will. Its 
aim must be permanency. If I advertise my second¬ 
hand car for sale, I want an immediate buyer and after 
delivery the matter ends. But we nurserymen advertise 
for another purpose; you want orders now; but your 
business does not end this year nor next year; when you 
sell a bill of goods to a planter, your business with that 
man has just begun; your buyers must be made into per¬ 
manent customers. A relationship of confidence and 
good-will is of the utmost importance to you. The buy¬ 
ing of nothing else requires the same degree of confi¬ 
dence that the planter must put in the nurseryman. Nur¬ 
sery advertising must be built on that idea. It must be 
frank, straightforward, absolutely truthful. It must 
never overstate the facts; under-statement is an actual 
advantage. It inspires confidence. And performance 
must match every promise. 
Since advertising copy and catalogues are closely 
bound up together and must supplement each other to be 
effective, I want to consider them together. 
Ti ■ees and plants and flowers offer the most attractive 
possibilities for interesting description and beautiful il¬ 
lustration. Nursery stock is one of the easiest things to 
advertise and yet for the individual nurseryman it offers 
the paradox of being at the same time one of the most 
difficult. It is easy to be general; it is difficult to be 
specific. 
Take the advertising of any other line: take automo¬ 
biles, for example. Automobile manufacturers don’t ad¬ 
vertise just “automobiles.” They don’t huy space nor 
print books to tell you how much fun it is to ride. The 
Studebaker Company advertises the Studebaker car. 
The Chandler advertises its “marvelous motor. ' The 
Hupmobile “gets there” and “you pay less for gas and 
oil and repairs.” Dodge Brothers pointedly inquire 
‘‘After the purchase price, what follows?” The point I 
want to make is that every man who buys a car know r s 
exactly why he buys that particular car. The advertise¬ 
ment tells the reason. 
When I read nursery advertisements I find that most 
nurserymen buy space to announce that they are nur¬ 
serymen: that they grow trees. There is neither news 
nor novelty in the statement. It is not advertising. No¬ 
body is going to make the mistake of supposing that a 
nurseryman is a purveyor of books or hats or ice-cream 
freezers. I consult a dozen nursery catalogues and I 
find them a dozen books about trees and plants, often 
very handsome books, differing in covers but not in 
contents, varying in minor details but not in essentials. 
I find that Jones and Brown distribute more or less well- 
written and handsomely illustrated books containing 
very much the same list of varieties described in about 
the same language and illustrated with the same pic¬ 
tures. They are good hand-books. But as a possible 
buyer from one of them, which one am I going to place 
my order with? How am I to know whether to buy of 
Jones or of Brown? The very thing that I am interested 
in as a buyer is the thing that is conspicuously absent in 
nearly every nursery catalogue. It is the “reason why.” 
And it isn’t there. 
If I am in need of a hat, I notice that the merchants 
who solicit my trade do not offer me just a hat—any old 
hat. I can buy a Knox or a Stetson or a Young hat and 
the seller of each gives me very good reasons why I 
should buy his hat. There is not the same opportunity 
for differentiating values in our line but there are oppor¬ 
tunities and the thing for the advertiser to keep in mind 
constantly is that some intelligent reason must be given 
the buyer for placing his order with the advertiser. 
With us, the absence of that “reason why” can be ac¬ 
counted for in tw o w r ays. One is the fact that nursery¬ 
men, like a good many advertisers, write their advertis¬ 
ing copy and their catalogues to themselves. It is mere¬ 
ly an expression of the universal vanity. But we must 
address ourselves to the people we want to buy our 
goods. You go about it apparently believing that the 
important thing is to sell. But the important thing to 
you is that people should buy your trees. Forget about 
selling; think about the buying end. And that means 
you’ve got to get away from constant thought of your 
business and become intensely interested in tlie buyer’s 
business. It is his order you want, isn’t it ? Go after it 
from his stand-point. Tell him the reason why he 
should buy your particular trees. If you are Brown, 
tell the planter why Brown’s trees are the ones to buy. 
That is the great difficulty in advertising nursery stock. 
