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Show I FOR OGDEN BUSINESS MEN Leading Advertising Manager of Kansas Addresses Retail Dealers on the Value of Advertising Every Business Man and Prospective Man Should Read It He Points Out "Waste" Advertising. The following address delivered by Marco Morrow, director of publicity for the Topeka daily papers at th.6 Re tail Shoe Dealers' convention of Kansas, Kan-sas, Is straight froin the shoulder and to the point for all kinds of newspaper advertising and reproduced for the benefit of Ogden newspapers and advertisers: ad-vertisers: "The other day an advertising agen cy handed me a nice little contract for advertising space in the several Capper publications amounting to a I little more than $10.000 the space to be used in the year 191-1 for what do you think? For advertisements of chewing gum Wrigley's Spearmint chewing gum. "And I am told by men who know that in this year of Our Lord, when certain slow-paced folk are bewailing the hardness of times, the Spearmint men will spend $700,000 in newspapers and $300,000 in farm papers and worn en's pajiers and illustrated weeklies and magazines, besides another mil lion dollars in other forms of adver Using. Two million dollars In one year for advertising an a-penny-a-stick article! "1 can't think .of a more striking example of the potency of advertising: advertis-ing: because you must know that 1 this appropriation of two million dol lars is gathered together a penny and a nickle at a time, by advertising. I now, u me men and women and boys and girls of Kansas can be in riuced by advertising to buy a cer t tain make of chewing gum in prefer ence to other brands, it stands to reason rea-son that they can also and likewise be induced, l judicious advertising to buy certain brands of boots and j shoes and tango slippers. You know I 1 that is true; you know it by expert ence and by observation. 1 High Value of Trade Marks. "Elden Keith, of Walk-Over shoe fame, recently publicly .stated that capitalists who wanted to buy out f his company were willing to allow $5,000,000 for the trade name. 'Walk-Over.' 'Walk-Over.' The trade marks of the American Tobacco companv were val ued at $15,000,000 in the petition sub- Imittcd to the United States district court in connection with the dissolu lion of the American Tobacco company. compa-ny. President Green of the National Biscuit company values the word 'Uneeda' at more than $1,000,000. "I am not quite conceited enough te stand up and profess to be able to point out the one way by which the Kansas shoe men can get 100 per cent efficiency for every dollar he spends in advertising. If I could tell ' you that of a surety, I'd be running a chain of shoe stores of my own. 1 Ail I can hope to do is to make a few suggestions which may help you to ! get down to the fundamentals of this big problem of advertising and thus help you to find a solid, a sane and a safe basis upon which to build your advertising campaign. ' . "The first fault of retail adverlhV ing shoe advertising and all kinds of advertising in Kansas and everywhere is a lamentable lack of definite aim and plan. "Ninety per cent or the retailers who are In this room advertise, it they advertise at all, on the hand-lo- , mouth plan. The amount of moncv you spent last week for advertising ! depended very largely: "First, upon the vigor and persist ency of advertising solicitors. Second, Sec-ond, upon the state of your digestion. Third, upon the cash in the till at the close of the day's business. : t What Advertising Is. j "None of which conditions should ! have any bearing whatsoever upon your advertising expenditure. Absolutely Abso-lutely none. And so long as you let your liver, or your day's sales, or the importunings of a solicitor determine your day's expenditure, juot so long will you fall to get the maximum results re-sults from your advertising. Because ' your advertising Is not an ephemeral. I a transient, a day-by-dar part of your I business; not at all; it Is an Integral J fundamental, p'ermanent, persistent what shall I say? a from-the-start- to-finish part of your business as necessary and as unavoidable as insurance in-surance and rent and taxes and light and heat nnd clerks and wrapping paper. pa-per. "The troubje Is this: The average retailer and for that matter, the average av-erage business man despite all the talk about advertising, has not yet got a firm grasp of the fundamental Idea the purpose, the aim, the function or nilvorMsinf Mo Is nnf to lnnk iinoii advertising as a business stimulator, and so It is, but It is much more. "It Is not merely a 'bracer,' a eock-tnil, eock-tnil, or a hypodermic needle to be used when the notion strikes you to give your business a sudden spurts it is a daily fare, the daily bread and meat of your business, the fuel in your engine, the Juice in your motor, and its purpose is not to move dead stock from your shelves; not to close out a line of odds and ends; not to bring in a crowd of bargain hunters. That's only a side Issue a mere incident in the real work of advertising. Aim to Build Up Trade. "The first aim, the chief purpose of your advertising should be to build up permanent trade; to make the people of your community look to you as the leader, the headquarters in your line; to make them think of you and of vnur nlno of hiisiiiosK p.vnrv time they see a pair of shoes; to convince con-vince them that they need not send to Kansas City or Chicago or any other 'furrin' port for shoes as long as you are this side or the village cemetery; to prove to them that in qualityVHn price and In service you have everybody in the state skinned a mile; to make your fellow townsmen nnd their country cousins bitter parti sans of yours, ready to blow and brag about you and fight for you if necessary. neces-sary. "That's what your advertising must do for you! That's the kind of advertising adver-tising that will pay dividends and it's the only kind of advertising that will lay. "You will never build the business nor make the profits which are possible possi-ble for you, until you abandon the haphazard, hit and miss methods oi advertising, get a clear idea of jus? what it is you want your advertising to accomplish for you, and then go at it in a systematic, persistent, bus! ness-Iike method. Make ah Appropriation. "Make an advertising appropriation and stick to it. Every pair of boots which leaves your shop must bring you its original cost plus a percentage to cover the cost of .doing business, plus another percentage of profit. Now your cost of doing business must include in-clude rent and Insurance and salesmen's sales-men's wages, and light, heat and taxes, tax-es, and interest on investment and advertising, and the score of incidentals inci-dentals that enter Into the Investment Invest-ment and' advertising and the score of incidentals that enter Into the conduct con-duct of a retail shop. And these charges against every pair of shoes are fixed, arc staple. You meet them without question or quibble. "If you had a bad day yesterdaj and your sales fell away below the normal nor-mal average, you don't say that you'll have to cut down clerk hire and' sus- PCnd VOUr best salesman unlit frnrln picks up; you don't say that you'll cut down your rent and move for a day or two to a side street; you don't say that you'll save the wear and tear on the sign over your door and take it down for a day or two; you don't say that you'll save taxes and rush up to the city officials and ask them to lav off the firemen nnd policemen and shut down the waterworks and turn off the electric lights until business busi-ness picks up. Oh, no; you wouldn't think of that; and yet that's exactly what you do with your advertising! "And another thing: Take advantage advan-tage of every bit of advertising done by manufacturers; utilize so far as possible all the general publicity which they give to lines you carry. "Manufacturers in every line realize today as never before the necessity of general advertising in the Interest of their individual brands. It la a species of protection to the manufacturer, manufac-turer, but It is also an inestlmablo aid to the retailer who is awake to Its possibilities. Shoo manufacturers have not done as extensive advertising advertis-ing as have manufacturers in some other lines. But trade-marked lines of shoes are now exploited in farm papers, magazines and daily newspapers newspa-pers of general circulation nnd the tendency Is growing. Manufacturers Will Help. "Your local newspaper must be the mainstay of your advertising campaign. cam-paign. By no other means can you roach so large a proportion of the best trade In your community so economically. eco-nomically. Set aside a definite sum to be spent In a year. Hnse your expenditure upon a percentage of your last year's business nnd spend it systematically. sys-tematically. Don't let the question of 'copy' frighten you to death; don't get the idea that 'eonv' Is the whole thing of advertising. To ho sure there's a great difference In the effectiveness ef-fectiveness of advertisements; but if you'll rorget all about fine writing, or being smart and clever; If you'll forget the big sounding, pat phrases which have been used so often that they mean nothing, and sit down and talk to the people of your community, your friends and neighbors, about your store and your stock and your service, you will write a good ad without knowing It. ' |