THE ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT 1. The director of the department.—Back of every advertising campaign there should be one man who is responsible for its success. His title may be advertis ing manager, marketing manager, advertising coun sel, sales manager, sales and advertising manager, president, general manager, merchandising director, or perhaps something different from any of these. But whatever his title, his duty is to devise and exe cute ways and means to promote the business thru publicity.
Sometimes one individual is responsible for all the sales activities of a business. He may personally su pervise the technique of advertising as well as the technique of personal salesmanship, or else he may give his time only to broad marketing problems, leav ing the specific direction of advertising and of per sonal salesmanship to subordinates who do the de tailed work of an advertising and sales manager. In other cases, there is no one officer who gives his time exclusively to all the marketing problems of the busi ness; the advertising manager and the sales manager are relatively supreme in their respective fields, and their activities are harmonized only thru their volun tary cooperation and their common subordination to a general manager or a president, who finds time, among his other duties, to retain broad supervision of marketing procedure.
2. Attributes of advertising manager.—The ordi nary title of the man who directs the publicity, regard less of whether he has or has not any authority over the personal salesmen, is advertising manager, and it is that title that we shall use. It is interesting to note some of the ways in which the attributes of a success ful advertising manager differ from the attributes of the man, commonly called the sales manager, who supervises the work of the salesmen. The sales man ager is responsible each month and each week for the sales. The sales manager brings in the harvest. The advertising manager sows the seed. He must have planned far ahead in his work. He must have vision. He must have imagination in its broadest sense. The salesman has his prospect constantly before him ; he can change his line of argument to meet conditions. The advertising man must imagine all conditions and make his arguments fit these conditions in advance.
The advertising manager must have the power of analysis. He must be able to weigh values. He must understand how to keep the big idea constantly in mind, and yet must be a man who will not let the detail of a misspelled word escape his notice. Mr. William H. Ingersoll, marketing manager of Robert H. Ingersoll & Brother, says : "Little as it is recog nized, advertising is one of the four or five •great uni versal arts, and of these it is the most difficult, for not only does it require practical understanding of human nature and how it may be influenced, but also an appreciation of several other arts, including those of the printer, the writer, the painter, and the or ganizer." The advertising manager is primarily an executive. He must understand organization, for it is his prov ince to deal with many individuals in his organization and out. Many of the most successful advertising managers have never written a line of copy in their lives. They edit much of it and know how to weigh values; but often they do not involve themselves with the details of copy writing.
3. Responsibility for the things in advertising are standardized; there are few prin ciples to apply. Accordingly, personal judgment is always an important factor in deciding on the details of a campaign. It is natural, therefore, that the owners and general managers of a business should be lieve that their judgment is as good as the advertis ing manager's, and that they should wish to super vise many of his functions in detail. Where this nat ural attitude is too pronounced, there is grave danger of seriously handicapping the advertising manager by permitting the active interest of too many of the company's executives in the conduct of the adver tising department. Advertising is fascinating, and everybody likes to have a finger in it. It is easy fdr the president of the company to insist on the necessity of his approving so many details of the advertising that the advertising manager is likely to ask himself "What will please the boss?" rather than "What will make customers?" Many advertising campaigns have failed because the recommendations of the ex pert advertising manager have been altered in favor of plans based merely on the prejudices and personal opinions of his superior officers.