OCR Text |
Show ADVERTISING DOESN'T PAY OR DOES IT? A guy named L. T. Beggs, who publishes the-Ajo, Arizona, Copper News, got fed up the other day with local merchants who say advertising doesn't pay. He sat down and wrote an innocent enough little piece what advertising has 'done. We are grateful to Mr. Beggs for allowing us to reprint his column, entitled, "Advertising Doesn't Pay." Here's what he wrote: "There was once a man in our town who awoke one morning and turned off the alarm on his Big Ben. "Throwing back the GE electric blanket, he stretched luxuriously before rising from his Beauty Rest mattress. Going to the bathroom, he washed with Lux, dried with a Cannon toweli, made sure qf the 'smile of beauty' before giving his scalp a brisk three-minute three-minute rub and scraped Burma Shave from his face - with a Gilette Safety razor equipped with genuine Blue Blades. Making sure his best friends wouldn't have to tell him, he wiped the ring from the face bowl, a Crane fixture. "Donning Jockey, shorts, Jerks socks, a J. C. Penney Pen-ney shirt with a Botany tie, a Town Clad suit, and Florsheim shoes, he sauntered into breakfast consisting consist-ing of Swift's ham and Milk White eggs cooked on a Hotpoint stove, spread Banquet butter on his.Holsum bread, and poured Cloverleaf cream in his Maxwell House coffee which had been brewed in a Silex coffee cof-fee maker. "While eating, he listened to the news on a Zenith radio, after which he donned his Portis hat, and entered en-tered his Ford, drove to a service station where he ordered a new Atlas tire for his delivery truck. He then drove to his business establishment over on Asphalt As-phalt street. . . "Looking over his excellent stock of standard merchandise, on display behind Pittsburgh plate glass windows, he spent the usual period of time in wide-eyed wide-eyed amazement bemoaning the fact that for every item of merchandise sold in his store, two or more similar items were purchased by his townspeople from out-of-town sources. When taxed on the matter he was told that they were unaware that he handled he line. "Opening the Yale lock on the front door he turned on the GE flourescent lights and checked the cash in his National cash register on a Burroughs adding machine. "Early in the day he disposed of several salesmen who tried to sell him a line of 'orphan' merchandise, telling them, "I can't sell that stuff here. No one ever heard of the brand.' "He then went to the postoffice and, after wading wad-ing knee-deep through the direct-mailing pieces he had posted the day before, grew another ulcer while watching a long line of people waiting to receive their packages from the mail order houses. "Upon returning to his store, he was disgusted to find the publisher of the local newspaper waiting to see him. "When approached for an advertisement, he gave his standard answer, 'Advertising, in this town, does not pay. Peoplee here all know where I am.' "The moral of the story is: if this man would abandon his attitude' to 'buy my merchandise, at my price, or you can go to . . . Salt Lake and remember that such silent advice is being taken more and more in these days of a buyer's market, he might possibly aid in getting the people to spend their money in the town where it was earned. |