Productive Advertising
A 1915 college textbook by Herbert W. Hess, assistant professor of commerce in the advertising and salesmanship department of the Wharton School, published by J. B. Lippincott with 84 illustrations.
What it is
A 1915 college textbook by Herbert W. Hess, assistant professor of commerce in the advertising and salesmanship department of the Wharton School, published by J. B. Lippincott with 84 illustrations. The preface sets the plan: the psychology of advertising, then its typography, its English and its economics, with the student moving from criticising ads in the first term to building a full campaign in the second. After a history that runs from Roman wall notices and town criers to the 6,000 national advertisers of 1915, chapters cover the senses, instincts, imagination, memory, attention, colour with process plates shown ink by ink, type, illustration, the trade-mark and its law, the campaign and its budget, media, the agency, creating a vogue, display, crowd psychology, copy, letters and the social effects of advertising. Each chapter ends with questions, problems and collateral readings.
Why read it now
Several of its rules still hold. Hess separates advertising, which educates people who have no desire yet, from salesmanship, which wins the choice between brands; that is close to today's split between building a category or brand and converting existing demand. His warning that display can pull attention to itself instead of the message matches modern findings on weak brand linkage, where a memorable ad is credited to the wrong brand or to none. His criticism of setting the budget as a fixed share of last year's sales, which cuts spending just when sales fall, is backed by studies of advertising in recessions that found brands keeping their spend tended to gain share. What has dated: the psychology is pre-experimental, built on William James, instincts and the four temperaments, and figures such as three lines of lower case reading as easily as one of capitals come without a source, though the direction held up in later tests. Use: take his campaign checklist (budget and how it is set, honesty, distribution route, area, competition, sales force) as the first page of any brief.
Passages worth keeping
Advertising is educating those to whom it is possible to sell but who have not had desire aroused.
الإعلان في نظره تعليم لمن يمكن أن يشتري لكنه لم يرغب بعد، أما المفاضلة بين المنتجات المتنافسة فهي عمل البائع.
The best advertisements are those most easily read; and, for this reason, lower case is being used more than ever before in display lines, as well as in the body of the advertisement.
أفضل الإعلانات أسهلها قراءة، ولهذا صار المعلنون يستعملون الحروف الصغيرة أكثر في العناوين وفي النص.
There is one important criticism to be made of this method, that in periods of falling sales or profits, the appropriations likewise decrease as a result of the fixed percentage used, whereas it is at such time that the appropriation should be increased.
ربط الميزانية بنسبة ثابتة من المبيعات يخفضها عند هبوط المبيعات، مع أن ذلك هو الوقت الذي ينبغي أن تزيد فيه.
That which is absolutely new first impresses one curiously and even suspiciously; with a tendency to reject, rather than to accept.
الناس يقابلون الشيء الجديد تمامًا بفضول وشك، وميلهم الأول إلى رفضه لا قبوله، ولذلك يحتاج إلى وقت وتكرار.
In this consists the great danger when display is concentrated upon itself, rather than upon the thought which it wishes to convey.
الخطر أن ينشغل الإعلان بلفت النظر إلى نفسه، فيتذكر الناس الحيلة وينسون الفكرة التي جاء ليقولها.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.