The Bemidji daily pioneer., 1915-12-10
you are going to get a much more in.
telligent result than ever before.
i T - nF.L IT,. Ft+sE ~.

. y
telligent result than ever before.
a.. Must Have Goods.
"Now I am going to leave out en-
tirely the first and most important
thing in any publicity campaign.
The first thing is to have the goods.
A man who advertised soap or sau-,
sage or a circus when he did not
know where he was going to get them
or it, would be prize chump. If he
had the goods but they were packed
up out in the warehouse
when people came to see them,
he would be about as badly off. He
must not only have the goods but
he must be able to show them. Every
man who has anything to do with
community work has come to realize
that the first thing is to make con-
ditions right and business will de-
velop. I'll not go into that; I take
it for granted that every community
is doing it's mightiest to make condi-
tions right. I am not taking much
for granted at that. From these
meetings I have had the privilege Of
attending, from the glimpses have
had of a thousand forms of activity
along the lines of community develop.
ment, by counties and towns and
clubs and Individuals, know what
splendid and earnest work is being
done everywhere in this country to
make conditions right.
, Must Have Story.
- ""You have got@to have good story.
to tell. Up here in the cut-over
country we have it.. You have got:
to deliver the goods. Northern Min
nesota can do it. :: l.: :.
"And then-tell the truth.
'"That sounds easy but. it is the.
hardest part of the job It is easy,
enough to refrain. from lying. You
very seldom see copy nowadays that
is wildly exaggerated, never any that
is deliberately false. It is not done
And the men who are promoting
publicity work don't want it done:
Every man in this room when he is
talking about his land and his town.
will say, The truth is good enough.
''Still it is good deal of a trick
to tell the truth. I knew a fellow
who was engaged to be married, who
wrote home to his folks all about
the girl. Now that boy told his peo-
pie the truth and the whole truth
and nothing but the truth so help
him. But do you suppose any of his
folks would have recognized the girl
if they had met her on the street.! Or
do you suppose when they came to
know her she was anything like what
any of them had imagined?
''It is as hard to make a stranger
understand about the country you
love as it is hard to describe the girl
to the folks. The man you are talk
ing to may not even speak the same
language that you do. The words
you use, call up very different pic
ture to him from what they do to
you.
Must Tell Truth.
"You have only the printed page
to help you when it takes all the
senses to tell one the truth, and then
you will guess wrong half of the time.
Did you ever play that fool game
where they pass round piece of
bread and a napkin ring and a chunk
of soap and the rubber stopper from
the wash bowl and ask you to guess
what they are in the dark.
'Telling the truth is a whole lot
of job. The most brilliant adver-
tising that was ever done in the Unit
ed States by any city, suppose, was
the Des Moines campaign few years
ago. The copy was great and there
was not word of untruth in it.
They used whole pages in Worlds
Work and Saturday Evening Post and
those publications. And yet most I
people in Des Moines admit that the I
was a failure. The most |
result was that a lot of
neon1a came tO DaS MOinas savinp !