The Brinkley argus., 1914-06-19
FUNCTION OF THE
 ADVERTISING ART
Is to Create or Enlarge Public Demand for Goods-The
 New EvangeI.

If that committee of the United States senate had only been wise or thoughtful enough to say that tn- tudious advertising is one of many factors in the increased cost of living. we should not have the chorus of dis sant from those who practically know something about the nature and func- ton of the advertising art.
 Taking the data before the com m1ttee. let us try to see what 1t prob ably had in mind, but failed to clearly express:
 1. An advertising project. dissociat- ed from those problems of production and distribution sure to be raised by it, becomes merely an additional charge upon the conduct of a busi- ness; and that charge must. tn great CT part, be shifted upon the consumer If that kind of advertising is to be kept going.
 2. Inconsiderate advertising is, there fore. an unprodnctfve expense that must In the last analysis, fall upon the consuming publSc.
 h short--however awkwardly. and even unconsciously--the committee has virtually classified ell advertising l into the categories of productive and 1 non-productive, and thus rendered real service to a great and expanding industry. For all will admit that while the practice of advertising has attained a respectable age and volume, the underlying science is still rudi- mentary, and in need of definite terms, conveying clean-cut meanings. What is all that we have been lately hear ing, through the columns of Printers Ink about the psychology of advertis- ing but groping after better basis than the familiar hit or miss, upon which to rest the unceasing ventures fin advertising? Why are many seats of the higher learning adding adver- Using courses to their curriculums It Is well. at d. moment itself psycho- logical, to have suggested to us a broad division of the subject upon which the whole science of the matter can be built. We all know what pro- ductive advertising means. What re- mains is to learn beforehand how to attain 1t.
 Quite recently, and very largely through the influence Of this journal, there has come realization that ad- vertising is a link in a chain, and not an ellipse or circle, beginning and ending in itself. The columns oi Printers Ink have teemed of late with new uses of old words and phrases, pressed into service to give emphasis to these now dominant ideas: Adver. l tising is a part, not the whole, 1t is the beginning, but not the ending, of l a process So ardent has been the preaching, and so responsive the au it1tence. that some who read this art1 cle will be sure to ask themselves Il they ever knew it to be otherwise The answer is yes, and the time SC lately that it must be counted by 6 few years, and not by so much as decade.
 Having reduced the dictum of the senate committee to its logical terms Jet us now try 10 SuIuHldri1o tfc H0" evangel of advertising, as put fortt under the Printers Ink imprimatur
 1. The object of the advertising if to create or enlarge a public demand for the goods.
 2. Behind the advertising must be the goods, 1eveiing up to the highest plane of tbe advertising.
 8. Back of the goods must be tht plans and means of distribution, equa to all the demands created by the ad vertisfng.
 4. AS the consuming demand grows the advertising should strengthen. the production better itself in quality ol price, and distribution become easie, and cheaper.
 It is obvious that. under such systematized project of advertising the consumer, wifi either get the same quality for hess money. or a bette' quality for the same money, and 1T either case,t the cost of living will no have been increased. Charles F. Ben ] T~kr