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

demand by advertising on our broom We won't attempt it, first, because men and children rarely use brooms. and, second. because the broom is on the way out and the vacuum cleaneT is coming in to take it's place. It would not be wise to build a na- tional advertising campaign on some- thing which may not exist a few years from now
 Tn escrub brush falls into the same l category. doesn't 1t? It is still used in some countries, but most American women won't get down on their knees even to floor daughter and applause), So we may pass up the scrub brush and consider the nail brush. I have noticed that people who need nail brushes most never seem to use them, so let us pass on and consider the hair brush. There IS brush that everybody-child, woman and man-no, let's not say anything about the hair brush or some of these bald headed men may think we are getting personal. (Snick- ers).
 How About Tooth BrushP
 Well, how about the tooth brush? The tooth brush Is certainly used or should be used by every man, woman and child every morning at least. and in the course of time we may have the entire world doing the same |, thing because it is a sound, sensible habit. Incidentally, again, the tooth brush is the cheapest brush in our line and so lends itself admirably to general advertising, since it has wide potential distribution. Everybody can use it and everybody can afford it. Let us select the tooth brush. then, as the basis of our campaign. Now we have In our line the pre- advertising tooth brush. It was a straight handled brush, you will re- member and had Il perfectly straight crop of bristles like those little mus taehes that used to be fashionable. Shall we lift that brush out of our line, put trade mark on the handle, and by shear weight of publicity con eentrate the existing demand for tooth brushes on our tooth brush? That was the way they conducted a national advertising campaign 20 years ago, Today, we have come to realize that no article is worth adver- tising that will not sell itself if the full facts about 1t are thoroughly un- derstood, because the most advertis- Ing can do is to make the full facts thoroughly understood.
 
 telligent merchants have long passed the point where they need coercion in the matter of truth fn-advertisinE because mdvertis- ing k simply an attempt to de-
 scribe merchandise so people will come into stores and see If the goods square with the descrip- tions., If not they don't buy, or
 if they do, they go back home and test the articles i'm the home and lind how big n liar the advertiser
 was. Of course if he wasn't a liar they would find that out. Any person who tries to sell by
 misrepresenting merchandise in advertising is tearing down with his own hand the only structure
 upon which success in merchant
 dising may be based md that fs
 the good will of the customer.
 Now a retailer may say, How can build advertising into an article ?" 1 Of course the retailer cannot build advertising into the article but he can pick articles into which advertising has been built.
 Building It In
 What do we mean by building ad- vertising into an article? How do you build advertising into an article.
 
 do you recognize merchandise into which advertising has been built, or l If you are retailer? How is ad- i vertising built into newspaper? | How is effective advertising built into any kind of media? It is done | through looking at the article through the eyes of the prospective customer. And we must remember clearly that we can't sell the article. Customers come in and buy articles but We never 1 sell articles. We sell the use to which the article will be put. Twenty years ago MT. Simmons of the Sim mons Hardware company, said to the salesmen in hardware stores: Don't try to sell augers; sell the customers holes and he will have to buy an auger to make them" The same thing is true of everything that you and I l try to sell. For example, let's take the case of mems ovcrcoats. Perhaps you think you bought an overcoat last fall? You didn't buy an over coat. What you bought was warmth, comfort, protection, style, it, appear ance; you bought the functions of the overcoat. Every woman who buys clothes buys style first and the other considerations--she doesn't buy a cloak or suit; she buys the function l ways true that what we must sell is the use to which the article is to be put. To find that use we must look at the article through the eyes of the prospective customer and consider what could the customer do with this article if she or he bought it. That idea is nothing new, of course; but l sometimes feel that if thing is new 1 it probably isn't true, and if it5s true certainly it will not be new, Ramesis, the III, said that about 1000 years ago. Let us now consider the possi- bility of building advertising into tooth brush by looking at the tooth brush through the eyes of the GUS toner and considering what the GUS toner does with brush and what he could do with a better one. What did the customer do with the pre-adver- tising brush? He first observed that while the Creator designed the human mouth on a curve, the manufacturer made straight-handed brush; so that If one becomes absent minded while using it, he might push the brush out through the side of his face. Let us build our first advertis- ing point into our brush by curving the handle to face.
 | The next objection to the old brush was the fact that the bristles came out readily that the brush might leave half it's winter coat among our teeth after using it once. We will overcome that objection by sinking the bristles directly in the handle. Next the old brush really didn't clean teeth. We don't have to clean teeth across the surface; but in between; a and the only way we can clean in be- tween our teeth Is to have a brush with the bristles cut so they can get in between; and so the next point will be the zgzagging of the bristles , of our brush so they can get in be-