ANALYSIS OF POSSIBLE DEMAND 1. The necessity of preliminary investigation.— Advertising is expensive, and a considerable length of time must be consumed before returns can reasonably be expected from the investment. An advertiser must have definite knowledge, therefore, of the con ditions of the market as they may affect his sales and definite knowledge of what he hopes to accomplish before be begins to spend his money. Not so very long ago advertising was looked on largely as a gam ble, and few if any preliminary investigations were undertaken before campaigns were launched. Even today we hear stories of newspaper advertising cam paigns to sell electric flatirons find electric toasters, conducted in a great number of cities, some of which are not equipped with electric power plants, and in which, therefore, no sales of electrical appliances could possibly be made.
2. A well-planned campaign.—In a previous Text the Crisco campaign was mentioned as one admir ably illustrating the results of careful investigation. There is a lesson for every advertiser in the details of this spectacular success. When the Procter & Gam ble Company put Crisco on the market in January, 1912, the campaign was launched only after two years of testing the product, investigating the market, and trying out various ways of reaching the market. Here was a great organization, capitalized at $15, 000,000, with an enviable record of success in adver tising soaps, familiar with the grocery trade, and in a position, one would think, to know exactly how to advertise any product going to the same class of people that used its other products. Nevertheless, the Procter & Gamble Company was not conceited enough to think that it could afford to enter on a new venture without a careful preliminary investigation. The first year was spent in tests in cooking schools, in laboratories, and in every conceivable place where Crisco might be used to advantage, to determine its value and uses. Nearly the whole year 1911 was con sumed in conducting test selling campaigns in differ ent territories in order to discover the most profitable plan of selling and advertising. In all, six different sales promotion plans were tried out in various parts of the country before any plan of action was adopted as a standard for the national campaign. Ten thou sand dollars are said to have been spent in one test alone.
The value of this long period of planning and of trying-out is clearly indicated by the fact that Crisco is today an assured success, outselling all of its com petitors in spite of the fact that substitutes for lard and butter in cooking had been on the market for more than a quarter of a century before Crisco first made its appearance.
3. The importance of modern adver tiser is beginning to learn from the chemist that time and money are saved by testing the sample and learn ing just what the sample consists of and just what may be expected of it, before proceeding with the entire quantity. He is learning from physics that a cross-section of any object will give an accurate guide to the body of the object. He is learning from the science of statistics that, while no man knows the exact moment of his death, the death rate of almost any city in America can be prophesied to within five persons in every thousand from year to year. While one cannot tell in advance accurately how much busi ness to expect or what particular kind of advertising appeal may influence each individual, he can make a fairly accurate estimate of total business and of the most profitable appeal, from the results of tests con ducted on a sufficient number of people.
If one were to ask what is the important part of any advertising campaign, the answer of the most thoughtful advertising men would undoubtedly be, "A thoro knowledge of all conditions." And a thoro knowledge of all conditions can be obtained only by careful preliminary investigation.
4. Relation between advertising and selling investi a manufacturer decides to try to market a product he should carefully investigate de mand, test his goods, study competition, and ask and answer a hundred questions that will help him in de termining the possibilities of success or failure. Then, after he has decided to launch a campaign, additional investigations are necessary to enable him properly to select trade channels and to plan the de tails of his sales and advertising campaigns. These details are dependent on all of the things the manu facturer has found out about his product, his market and the ways of reaching the market. In the Text on "Marketing Methods" the questions to be asked in advance of the opening of any selling campaign are considered in their relation to the plan behind the per sonal salesmanship and the advertising—to those pre liminary problems that must be solved before the manufacturer decides to use either personal salesman ship or advertising, or both, to market his goods. In this chapter and the one following, many of the same questions are considered, but specifically in relation to their effect on the details of the advertising cam paign.