Printers' Ink, November 3, 1927 (Vol. 141, No. 5)
A 224-page issue led by Bruce Barton's "The Creed of an Advertising Man," his address to the advertising agencies convention in Washington.
What it is
A 224-page issue led by Bruce Barton's "The Creed of an Advertising Man," his address to the advertising agencies convention in Washington. Barton opens with his clergyman father's joke that there will be no advertising men in heaven, then answers Stuart Chase's attack on advertising in "Your Money's Worth": any calling can be indicted by telling half the facts; Americans buy style and pride, not bare performance (Chrysler's small, high-priced car); and advertising enlarges wants, so people produce more. He closes with two articles of faith: advertising is the voice of business, and it keeps business in the open, held to public ideals. Harry D. Nims, who drafted the 1911 Model Statute, now law in twenty-three states, traces how the courts came to treat truth-telling as a merchant's duty. Also: M. J. B. coffee addressing men, Thomas F. Logan on radio showmanship, and W. Livingston Larned on action headlines.
Why read it now
Read Barton for the argument, not the uplift. His strongest point holds: buyers pay for style, pride and convenience, not only function, which matches what brand research finds about symbolic value. His claim that advertising keeps business in the open is half right: public promises do create accountability, and firms with a known name have more to lose by cheating, but the untested claims Chase attacked were real and fed the consumer testing movement. His economics of ever-rising wants is contested, and his scorn for thrift reads badly given the crash two years later. Nims's essay is the more durable piece: the move from buyer beware to a merchant's duty to tell the truth, including a duty not to mislead by silence, now underlies consumer law in most markets. Logan's warning that radio needs showmanship more than salesmanship still applies to audio and video ads. Use: when your category is attacked, answer with the full facts, as Barton himself recommends, not with a creed.
Passages worth keeping
And when you get all the facts it is very difficult to muck-rake.
النقد الفضائحي يعيش على نصف الحقيقة، ومن يجمع الوقائع كلها يصعب عليه أن يدين مهنة كاملة.
I am in advertising because I believe in business, and advertising is the voice of business.
يعمل بارتون في الإعلان لأنه يؤمن بالتجارة، ويرى الإعلان الوسيلة التي تتكلم بها التجارة إلى الناس.
advertising is the power which keeps business out in the open, which compels it to set up for itself public ideals of quality and service and to measure up to those ideals.
الإعلان يجعل الشركة تعلن وعودها بالجودة والخدمة أمام الجميع، فتصبح ملزمة بالوفاء بها لأن الجمهور يراقبها.
If advertising speaks to a thousand in order to influence one, so does the church.
الهدر في الوصول إلى جمهور واسع من أجل إقناع قلة ليس عيبًا خاصًا بالإعلان، بل هو طبيعة كل دعوة عامة.
it is now a generally accepted principle of merchandising that the consumer has the right to assume that it is the positive, affirmative duty of every merchant to tell the truth about his goods.
صار من المسلم به أن المستهلك يحق له أن يفترض صدق التاجر، وأن قول الحقيقة عن السلعة واجب على البائع لا تفضل منه.
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.