The Yale expositor., 1910-10-14
THE ART OF
ADVERTISING
BY EBERT HUBBARD

All literature is advertising, and all
written advertising that grips atten-
tion is literature.
The world accepts a man or an in
stitution at the estimate 1t places on
itself. To let the rogues and fools
expound and explain you to the multi
tude, and you yourself make no sign,
is to allow the falsehood to pass as
current coin.
And soon it becomes legal tender.
According to the common law of Eng
land a path across your property once
used by the people is theirs for all
time
In America millions of dollars are
now being expended by certain sue
cessful firms and corporations TO cor
rect wrong impression that has been
allowed to get foothold in the public
mind concerning them.
You must advertise, wisely and dis
creetly so as to create a public opin-
ion that is favorable to you.
To stand still is TO retreat
To worship the god Terminus is to
have the Goths and Vandals, that skirt
the borders of every successful ven
ture, pick UP your Termini and carry
them inland. long miles, between the
setting of the sun and his rising.
To hold the old customers, you must
get out after the new.
When you think you are big enough,
there is lime in the bones of the boss,
and a noise like buccaneer is heard
I'm the offlng.
The reputation that endures, or the
institution that lasts, is the one that
is properly advertised.
The only names in Greek history
that we know are those which Her
odotus and Thucydides graved with
deathless styh
The men of Rome who lived and
tread the boardwalk are those Plut-
arch took up and writ their names
large on human hearts.
All that Plutarch knew of Greek
heroes was what he read in Herodo-
tus.
All that Shakespeare knew of clas-
sic Greece and Rome, and the heroes
OF that far-off time, is what he dug
out of Plutarch's lives. And about all
that most people now know of Greece
and Rome they got from Shakespeare.
Plutarch doomed his Roman friends
and matched each favorite with some
Greek, written of by Herodotus. Plu-
tarch wrote of the men he liked, some
OF whom we know put up good ma
yuma to cover e-Aenses.
Horatius still stands at the bridge,
because a poet placed him there.
Paul Revere rides adown the night
giving his warning cry because Long
fellow set the meters in a gallop.
Across the waste of waters the enc
my calls upon Paul Jones to surrender,
and the voice of Paul Jones echoes
back, Damn your souls, we have not
yet begun to fight" And the sound
of the fearless voice has given courage
to countless thousands to snatch vic
tory from the jaws Of defeat
in Brussels there is yet to be heard
a sound of revelry by night only be-
cause Byron told of it.
Commodore Perry, that rash and i'm
pulsive youth of &c, never sent that
message, I'VE have met the enemy
and they are ours" but a good report
er did, and the reporters words live,
while Perry's died on the empty air
Lord Douglas never said:
The hand Of Douglas is his own,
And never shall in friendship grasp,
The hand of such Marmion clasp.
Sir Walter Scott made that remark
on white paper with an eagles quill,
and schoolboys' hearts will beat high
as they scorn the proffered hand on
Friday afternoons, for centuries to
come
Virginius lives in heroic mold, not
for what he said or did, but for the
words put into his mouth by a man
VINO pushed what you call virile pen
and wrote such an ad for Virginius as
he could never have written for him
self
Andrew ]. Rowan carried the mes
sage to Garcia all right, but the deed
would have been lost in the dust bin
of time, and quickly, too, were it not
for George II. Daniels, who etched the
act into the memory of the race, and
fixed the deed in history sending it
down the corridors of time with the
rumble of the Empire State Express,
so that today it is part of the cur
rent coin of the mental realm, legal
tender wherever English is spoken.
All literature is advertising.
And all genuine advertisements are
Literature.
The author advertIses men, times,
places, deeds, events and things. His
appeal is to the universal human soul.
If he does not know the heart-throbs
of men and women, their hopes, joys,
ambitions, tastes. needs and desires,
his work will interest no one but him
self and mis- admiring friend
Advertising is fast becoming a fine
art. Its theme is Human Wants and
where, when and how they may be
gfatified.
Il interests, inspires, educates-
eometimes amuses-informs, and
thereby uplifts and benefits, lubricat
81 1,oI Int ha oil