The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-03-26

Now what does the customer want to do with toothbrush after use2 He would like to hang 1t out of the way where it will dry, but the old-fash- toned brush had no hole in the han dle. and if you ever tried to drive q hole in bone handle with hammer and a nail. you found 1t very un- handy operationl So the next thing we will do Is to assemble the finish ed brushes in a circle with the hand les arranged so we can bring a drill down and stamp holes In the handles of 50 at once, Our customer then takes our brush and after using it hangs 1t up-but on second thought he has got to have a hook to hang the hole on, and the average house. hold usually isn't supplied with hooks, so our next advertising point will be To supply just the right kind of a hook, slipped into the hole in the handle of the brush and held in place with slip of paper. The customer tears off the paper. takes out the hook, screws it into the bath cabinet and hangs on 1t the hole in the handle of the brush curved to fit the face, with bristles that wou't fall out. that are cut to clean the teeth.
 Now let us see If there are any more points we might build into our brush. A few weeks ago I met a man in Salt Lake City who had what I (being a bachelor) thought was a large family. He had ten children. said to him. You must have quite Ia problem, supplying your family with tooth brushes" He said. You have touched upon one of the domes- tic trag edies of my life. When have to buy tooth brushes for my family must go to every drug store, in Salt Lake City and then run over to Od- den to get enough brushes with blue red, yellow and different colored handles so they won't get mixed up." l said. You won't have that trouble any more after we have built our brush, because what we are going to do is to have a number stamped on each brush running one to 12. so having big family of 12 you may simply ask the clerk for one of the numbered sets and you use number one, mother may use number 2, and so on down to the fullest child who will have number 12. Thereafter you will have no trouble about getting the family tooth brushes mixed
 (Laughter.)
 Summary of Points
 Now let us see how many points we have built into our brush: :: We have curved the handle to the face, cut the bristles to fit the teeth, set them in solid rubber. put hole in the handle, supplied hook to hang the hole on and numbered the brushes to get the family trade-six advertising points we have built into our brush. Now, let us build one or two into the package that contains the product. This is after the next big feature of a modern advertising campaign. Take cereals, for example. A few years ago when mother sent you to buy some rolled oats you went into a grocer's store and said: Please sir mother wants two pounds of rolled oats'' What did the grocer say? He said, Pussy, you will have to get out of that box of rolled oats; you and your entire family must get right out" (Illustrasing grocer mak- ing the eat get out of the box and wrapping up the package of oats). And after he had handed you the package of rolled oats, pussy would go back. Now, there was always a certain number of people who ob- jected to rolled oats upon which pus- sy had raised her family; and some marketing genius evolved the idea of taking rolled oats at the mill and dropping them into cartons to be her. medically sealed so the oats came to the customer untouched by pussy's g family On that idea the entire pack Iage cereal business of the world has been built.
 Now we can apply precisely that same thought to our tooth brush. be- cause you know how you used to buy J ffcip tooth brushes YOU were shown a tray full of multi-col- ored brushes. The important thing about a brush Is not the color of the handle but the stiffness of the brist- les, and so you would pick out brush and test 1t with your thumb. If you found it too stiff you picked up another one and so on until you found one that suited you. You took that one home and you put in your mouth a brush that perhaps 50 people had had in their hands. You didn't like to do it, but you had to, It was the only way you could buy brush in those days. We will capitalize on that objection, by bringing our hn- ished brush along on little carrier ana drop 1t into an oiled-paper enve- lope on which we have printed these words: This brush comes to you untouched by human hands" If our brush were lying along side Of a brush obviously touched by 90 hanas there isn't anybody in this room who would hesitate & minute in decidins which brush to buy. That point alone will give us the entire tooth brush market in the course of time as II becomes known unless some other tooth brush manufacturer builds more and better points into his package
 We will not market our brush In
 that package because wa can use
 carton AS an effective link in our sailing chain. We will create car ton in high-speed colors that have a kick and on that carton we Will have 6 description and picture of the brush. Then we will use tho picture of that carton in all our advertisins'
 national and local, for the reason that if prospective customer goes into a drug store to buy something and while buying this other product his eyes fall on that carton which
 has been pietpred all over the coun- try, he may say: Why. here is that ne tooth brush I have been intend ing to try" The carton makes the tie-up between the customer and the potential demand, and the article and the place where the article can he bought. Having the carton we may as well build one more adver- tising point into by way of uncondi- tional guarantee, which might run thus: If for any reason this tooth brush fails to give you the service and satisfaction you think it should bring it to any drug store, anywhere, and get another" We can risk a guarantee of that kind, because we
 realize that if an article cannot stand the fierce. white light of publicity, We had better not turn 1t on. and If we have made a mistake the quicker
 we find it out the better. And on the other hand, if it can stand the light we may as well make use of the