13. Advertisements that represent the dealer.— When the manufacturer wishes to present complete advertisements to his distributers, a better plan than the sending of electrotyped advertisements is to send sheets of paper to the dealer, showing suggested ad vertiSements of the manufacturer's goods. The dealer can use the suggested wording if he wants to, or he can change it to suit himself. When cuts are used the dealer can get them on request or for a nominal charge. Dealers like this kind of advertis ing assistance. The only objection to it from the manufacturer's point of view is that most dealers, when they use the suggested advertisements at all, use them without alteration. To this extent, this adver tising is open to the same objections as the older type of plated advertisements.
Complete advertisements furnished to dealers, either plated or simply printed as suggestions, may deal entirely with the goods of the manufacturers supplying them, or they may contain sales talk about other things in the dealer's stock. In the former case, many dealers resent the obvious selfishness of the manufacturer's appeal. They are much more likely to give their support to a manufacturer who helps them sell other things in addition to his own product.
Some manufacturers supply dealers with complete advertisements, but make no attempt to prepare stock advertisements. When a retailer asks help, his store and his particular problems are studied by cor respondence and thru the reports of salesmen. As a, result the manufacturer's advertisement department is able to write advertisements that just as truly rep resent the dealer as if he wrote them himself. This kind of assistance is about the maximum of advertis ing service that a manufacturer can give a retailer in his attempt to obtain cooperation. For many manu facturers, however, it is prohibitively expensive.
14. Furnishing parts of advertisements.—The ma jority of advertisers have abandoned the attempt to supply dealers with complete newspaper advertise ments. A common practice now is to furnish cuts for illustrations only. The dealer receives sheets showing stock cuts illustrating the manufacturer's goods. He selects what he wants and uses them in any way he wants to in his advertisements. A com mendable modification of this practice is to send with the book of cuts suggested sentences or paragraphs that can be used by the dealer when he publishes the cuts. If these paragraphs are written in a lively way, and if the dealer is assured that they are merely intended to help him and not to bind him to any par ticular phraseology, he is likely to use them.
Several stove manufacturers have made a practice of furnishing cuts illustrating almost everything in a, retail hardware store, and even of writing copy to go with the cuts. They asked nothing for the serv
ices, merely putting their own trade-marks, often in inconspicuous places, on the cuts or copy furnished.
Some manufacturers furnish street-car cards and sheets for bill-posting to dealers who use these me diums. Others simply make suggestions for any kind of advertising a dealer may wish to undertake.
15. Assistance in dealers' direct advertising.— Many retailers find that direct advertising to their customers or possible customers, either alone or in combination with newspaper and sign advertising, is a valuable method of building business. They often find it just as difficult to prepare their own direct ad vertising, however, as to prepare their newspaper ad verti8ements. Accordingly, some manufacturers help them in this form of publicity. The great clothing companies send out style books to lists of names fur nished them by their dealers. Each book carries the dealer's imprint, and usually is accompanied by a let ter, prepared by the manufacturer, but signed by the dealer. Modifications of this plan are used by man ufacturers in other lines. Doubtless the plan is ef fective, but great care must be used if the manufac turer wishes consumers really to believe that the direct advertising carries the sincere indorsement of his local dealer. A dealer's direct advertising that is obviously furnished by a manufacturer is not so effective as that which carries some ear-marks of the dealer's personality.
16. Manufacturers' , consumer have described a number of ways in which advertis ing may be used by a manufacturer to induce dealers to cooperate with him in the sale of his goods. All of them are good when employed wisely, and all of them are widely used. But none of the special forms of inducements to dealers should blind the manufac turer to the greatest inducement of all—persistent, effective advertising by the manufacturer, directed toward the consumer, slowly but steadily making the manufacturer, his goods, his trade-mark and his sell ing points known to the public and, if not actually creating insistent consumer demand, at least paving the way for ready acceptance of the manufacturer's product when any effort at all is put behind it by the dealer. This form of advertising assistance, more than any other, helps the dealer to make sales quickly and at little expense, and, when it is used for a prod uct that has quality and that gives the dealer a satis factory profit, it is usually successful in inducing val uable cooperation.