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Show ! I TRUTH about ADVERTISING J By CHARLES B. ROTH AN EXPERIMENT IN HORSE-FEEDING THERE'S an old story I have always al-ways liked. It is about the parsimonious parsi-monious Frenchman who rued the money he spent in feeding his horse. After scheming and planning he hit upon an idea which would enable en-able him to stop all that. It was beautifully simple: Each day he would gradually cut down the amount of feed '"i I . 1 he gave the horse. He would cut it 'down so gradually, , in fact, that the animal ani-mal wouldn't ever realize he was being cheated. The horse would thus become used to getting along on less. Eventually he would need no feed at all. Think of the money that would Charles Roth robust health and full of energy and strength. Many examples can be cited of the inevitable result of stopping advertising. ad-vertising. Two will do. Forty years ago there was a remedy on the market mar-ket which was America's biggest seller. It was widely, intelligently, consistently advertised. Its name was a household word. Then the founder of the business died. His heirs decided to cut out advertising because "our product is so well known people will have to buy it." The product passed out of the picture pic-ture entirely. Another was a fine, honest, well-made, well-made, well-advertised toilet soap, with all the good will any product could possibly need. The management manage-ment of the business changed. The advertising stopped. Soon the product prod-uct was no longer on the market. The reason why advertising must be a continuous process is that we human beings need constant reminding. remind-ing. We're not fickle. But we are so filled with our own ideas and plans and businesses that if a man who wants our trade doesn't ask for it regularly and often, we drift elsewhere else-where to the man who does. The advertiser is faced by the problem of asking hi3 customers to buy from him, but he also has to consider the most economical way of extending his invitation. He finds the answer to both parts of this problem In the newspaper. No other form of advertising; has ever been discovered which will carry his message so effectively (or se little eest. Ctiarl B. ItMh. save! The French genius scientifically set about carrying on the experiment. experi-ment. Several months later he was telling about it with pride in his voice. Did it work? asked a friend. "Work? Oh, yes, indeed, it did!" he exclaimed, "It worked perfectly. perfect-ly. Beautifully. The only trouble was that just about the time my horse got used to going without feed", ha died." We laugh at the benighted condition condi-tion of a man with an idea as foolish fool-ish as this, but many business men try to stop feeding their business 'horse" by eliminating or cutting down on their advertising. The fact is that advertising is the feed which keeps their business in |