It should be remembered that personal salesman ship and advertising are but two different ways of doing the same thing, and that before either one is attempted, the man with something to sell must find out many things. Everything that he finds out has a bearing on everything that he does later to accom plish his purpose. In the present Text we are con cerned only incidentally, for the purposes of review, with the way in which investigations aid a man in deciding whether or not to launch a campaign at all ; chiefly we are concerned with the way in which they help him in preparing the thousand details of the campaign that revolves around the appeal of ad vertising.
5. Developing demand.—One of the first questions to be asked in planning an advertising campaign is, "Is this a product with which the public is now fa miliar, or must people be educated to the use of it?" If the article to be advertised is entirely new, the advertiser must undergo the expense of an educa tional campaign. On the other hand, if the public is already familiar with something similar to the new article, the great expense of an educational campaign may not be called for, but the advertiser has immedi ately to face the serious element of competition, and the fact that the public is already using a similar prod uct which can, perhaps, be displaced in popular favor only with the greatest difficulty.
6. Time required to develop demand.—Before the days of the cash register, the adding and the talk ing machines, business houses were handling cash, keeping books and writing letters. All three of these inventions completely revolutionized their fields. Tho competition soon sprang up, the principal prob lem of the manufacturers of these machines was that of educating the business man to change from the old way to the new way. It is not enough simply to discover a new and a better way. Much time and money are usually required before the new way is ac cepted by the public.
As far back as 1890, Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph, and the newspapers of that day car ried his statement of the advantages which would re sult from this discovery. He laid particular stress on its possible use in business correspondence. Yet it was not until twenty years later, when the Dicta phone Company undertook a carefully laid out ad vertising campaign to educate the American business man to the use of the talking machine, that any con siderable demand was developed for it in business offices.
When the Thermos bottle was introduced by Wil liam B. Walker in 1907, there was, of course, no de veloped demand. A carefully planned educational campaign of advertising was conducted; yet it was not until the beginning of 1913 that any appreciable demand for Thermos bottles was developed among mechanics for use with their dinner pails—the class of demand which will probably be the greatest, and the use which would appear to the outsider as the most evident.
The difference between satisfying a developed and an undeveloped demand is well illustrated by com paring the Thermos campaign with a safety razor campaign. In the latter part of 1912, William B. Walker put the Mark Cross safety razor on the mar ket. With the aid of a developed demand, a well planned advertising campaign, and a startlingly low price, the sale of Mark Cross razors in New York City alone amounted to over 98,000 the first day the advertisement appeared. The sale for the first three days in New England and New York State reached the astounding figure of 2,000,000.
7. Influence of price.—It must be borne in mind that a low price greatly assists, and a high price often retards, the development of demand. There were enough Thermos bottles sold to automobilists and others at $7.50 to $12.50 to keep the American Ther mos Bottle Company running at full capacity, but it was not until the price reached $1 to $2.50 that the demand of the laboring classes began to be felt. Mr. Walker's own words in relation to how quickly the demand was created thru advertising are inter esting. He says: "New manufacturing concerns usually spend $200,000 or $300,000 and wait three or four years to establish a demand for their product and see their money coming back. From the moment we took six full-page spreads in the New York City papers, to tell about the Thermos bottle, we have never caught up with the demand." 8. The repeat element.—The Cross razor is seldom found on the market today. Because of the startlingly low price, entering into a field of devel oped demand, its success was phenomenal in the be ginning. But the advertiser had evidently overlooked one very important element in the planning of any advertising campaign. This is the element of "re peat." An advertiser may apparently be successful in the beginning; but with many products one sale does not naturally lead to another, and, if the same customer does not come back and purchase again, one of two things will happen. Either the time will arrive when every possible customer has been sold and no new sales can be made, or, after the early advertising has done its work and publicity is discontinued, sales will stop because the many non-users of the product have not been influenced to buy it. The Mark Cross razor was well advertised and largely sold. Pre sumably many of the original purchasers are still using their razors, and there is no reason why they should purchase again. The discontinuing of the ad vertising lost to the manufacturer the opportunity to make sales to the millions of people who were not reached by the early publicity.