Advertising: Selling the Consumer
John Lee Mahin, a Chicago advertising agency head, built this textbook from a 1910 evening class at Northwestern University's School of Commerce and lectures at several state universities; it was published for the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World.
What it is
John Lee Mahin, a Chicago advertising agency head, built this textbook from a 1910 evening class at Northwestern University's School of Commerce and lectures at several state universities; it was published for the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World. Its premise is that advertising can appeal only to "free dollars", money a buyer is not forced to spend, so it must win preference by serving a group of people who think alike. Twenty-nine chapters run from that idea through the tools of advertising, choosing and checking media (newspapers, magazines, street cars, posters), building and testing copy, and selling through wholesalers and retailers, to price maintenance, mail order, trademarks, goodwill and the agency. The core device is five tests for finished ads (institutional, specific, forcible, plausible, sincere), applied to real ads from Wanamaker, Marshall Field, Ingersoll, Eastman Kodak and Old Dutch Cleanser. Each chapter ends with an annotated reading list.
Why read it now
The free dollar is the idea to keep: once a basic need is met, every extra riyal spent on style, design or place is a choice the brand has to earn. Ehrenberg-Bass research fits this, finding that most buyers pick among similar brands and that being easy to recall and trust decides the sale. The five tests still work as a sign-off checklist, and "plausible" and "sincere" catch most weak claims. His Mennen's talcum story, where a Detroit department store held a higher price by guaranteeing the genuine article, still explains why trust beats price wherever fakes circulate. What has dated: his defence of manufacturers fixing resale prices, which competition law in many markets restricts; his claim that advertised goods always cost less, where the evidence is mixed (Benham found in 1972 that eyeglasses cost more where advertising was banned, yet brand premiums persist); and his forecast that a laborer's dollar would buy twice as much in ten years. Use: make the five tests the final approval questions for every campaign asset, each answered in one written sentence.
Passages worth keeping
Nothing is more artificial than that something which we call style.
الطراز أو الموضة شيء يصنعه التسويق لا المادة الخام، ولذلك يمكن أن تتغير قيمة السلعة نفسها دون أن يتغير فيها شيء.
It is a great mistake to believe that, because people remember very little of what they see, an advertisement should consist of very few words.
قلة ما يتذكره الناس لا تعني أن الإعلان يجب أن يكون قصيرًا؛ فالتكرار والتفصيل المشوق هما ما يثبت الفكرة في الذهن.
The five tests as they now stand are: (1) Is it institutional? (2) Is it specific? (3) Is it forcible? (4) Is it plausible? (5) Is it sincere?
خمسة أسئلة يُحكم بها على الإعلان قبل الموافقة عليه: هل يعبر عن هوية المؤسسة، وهل هو محدد، وهل هو قوي التأثير، وهل يمكن تصديقه، وهل هو صادق.
People who buy things because they are cheap or because they are so-called bargains are wasting their substance.
من يشتري لأجل الرخص وحده يخسر ماله، لأنه يتحمل وحده مسؤولية الجودة، بينما العلامة التجارية تضع هذه المسؤولية على المصنع.
Advertising cannot benefit the advertiser if it does not serve the consumer.
الإعلان الذي لا يخدم المستهلك لا ينفع المعلن نفسه؛ فالربح يأتي من الفائدة التي يحصل عليها المشتري.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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