is a red-blooded, two-fisted occupation, engaged in for the
most part by upstanding Americans of the kiss-the-flag or
knock-’em-down-and-drag-’em-out variety. Yet years of contact with
the profession compel me for the sake of truth to temper this remark
by adding that it also contains, or rather confines, within its
mystic circle a group of reluctant and recalcitrant “creatures that
once were men,” who, moving through a phantasmagoria of perverted
idealism, flabby optimism, and unexamined motives, either deaden their
conscience in the twilight of the “Ad. Men’s Club,” or else become so
blindly embittered or debauched that their usefulness is lost to all
constructive movements.
Generally speaking, however, advertising is the graveyard of literary
aspiration in which the spirits of the defeated aspirants, wielding a
momentary power over a public that rejected their efforts, blackjack
it into buying the most amazing assortment of purely useless and
cheaply manufactured commodities that has ever marked the decline of
culture and common sense. These men are either caught early after
their flight from college, or else recruited from the newspaper world.
Some--the most serious and determined--are products of correspondence
schools. Others are merely robust spirits whose daily contact with
their fellow-men does not give them sufficient opportunity to disgorge
themselves of the abundance of misinformation that their imaginations
manufacture in wholesale quantities. This advertising brotherhood is
composed of a heterogeneous mass of humanity that is rapidly converted
into a narrow-minded wedge of fanatics. And this wedge is continually
boring into the pocketbook of the public and extracting therefrom a
goodly quantity of gold and silver. Have you ever conversed with one
of the more successful and important members of this vast body? If
so have you been able to quit the conversation with an intelligent
impression of its subject-matter? For example: do you happen to know
what a visualizer is? If not, you would be completely at the mercy of a
true advertising exponent. Returning to my Edisonian method of attack,
do you happen to know by any chance what a rough-out man is, or what is
the meaning of dealer mortality, quality appeal, class circulation, or
institutional copy? Probably not, for there is at bottom very little
meaning to them; nevertheless, they are terms that are sacred to a
great number of advertising men, and which, if unknown, would render
all intelligent communication with them quite impossible.
If you should ever attend a session of these gentlemen in full cry--and
may God spare you this--you would return from it with the impression
that all was not well with the world. You would have heard speeches on
the idealism of meat-packing, and other kindred subjects. The idealism
would be transmitted to you through the medium of a hireling of some
large packing organization, a live-wire, God-bless-you, hail-fellow
type. Assuming that you had been there, you would have witnessed this
large fellow with a virile exhalation of cigar-smoke, heave himself
from his chair; you would have observed a good-natured smile play
across his lips, and then you would have suddenly been taken aback
by the tenderly earnest and masterfully restrained expression that
transformed our buffoon into a suffering martyr, as, flinging out his
arms, he tragically exclaimed, “Gentlemen, you little know the soul
of the man who has given the Dreadnought Ham to the world!” From this
moment on your sense of guilt would have increased by leaps and bounds
until at last you would have broken down completely and agreed with
everything the prophet said, as long as he refrained from depriving
you of an opportunity to make it up to the god-like man who gave
Dreadnought Hams to the world.
The orator would go on to tell you about the happiness and sunlight
that flood the slaughter-house in which Dreadnought Hams are made.
You would hear about the lovely, whimsical old character, who, one
day, when in the act of polishing off a pig, stood in a position
of suspended animation with knife poised above the twitching ear
of the unfortunate swine, and seizing the hand of the owner as he
passed benevolently by, kissed it fervently and left on it a tear of
gratitude. Perhaps you would not hear that in the ardour of loyal
zeal this lovable old person practically cut the pig to ribbons, thus
saving it from a nervous collapse, nor would you be permitted to hear a
repetition of the imprecations the old man muttered after the departing
back of the owner, for these things should not be heard,--in fact,
they do not exist in the world of advertising. Nothing would be said
about the red death of the pig, the control of the stock-raiser, the
underpaying of the workers, the daughter who visits home when papa is
out and the neighbours are not looking, the long years of service and
the short shrift of age, the rottenness and hypocrisy of the whole
business--no, nothing should be said about such things. But to make up
for the omission, you would be told in honied words of the workers who
lovingly kiss each ham as it is reverently carried from the plant to
receive the patriarchal blessing of the owner before it is offered up
as a sacrifice to a grateful but greedy public. The whole affair would
suggest to you a sort of Passion Play in which there was neither Judas
nor Pilot, but just a great, big happy family of ham producers.
This speech, as I have said, would soon appear in the principal papers
of the country. It would be published in installments, each one bearing
its message of peace on earth, good-will to men, and the public--always
preferring Pollyanna to Blue Beard--would be given an altogether false
impression of Dreadnought Hams, and the conditions under which they
were produced. But this particular speech would be only a small part of
the idealism you would be permitted to absorb. There would also be a
patriotic speech about Old Glory, which would somehow become entangled
with the necessity for creating a wider demand for a certain brand of
socks. There would perhaps be a speech on the sacredness of the home,
linked cunningly with the ability of a certain type of talking-machine
to keep the family in at nights and thus make the home even more
sacred. There would be speeches without end, and idealism without
stint, and at last every one would shake hands with every one else and
the glorious occasion would come to an end only to be repeated with
renewed vigour and replenished optimism on the following Friday.
But the actual work of creating advertisements is seldom done in this
rarefied and rose-tinted atmosphere; it is done in the more prosaic
atmosphere of the advertising agency. (And let it be said at once that
although, even in the case of agencies engaging in “Honest Advertising”
campaigns, many such firms indulge in the unscrupulous competitive
practice of splitting their regular commission with their clients in
order to keep and secure accounts, there are still honest advertising
agencies.)
Now there are two important classes of workers in most agencies--the
copy-writer and the solicitor--the man who writes the advertisements
and the man who gets the business. This latter class contains the
wolves of advertising, the restless stalkers through the forests
of industry and the fields of trade. They are leather-lunged and
full-throated; death alone can save their victims from hearing their
stories out. Copywriters, on the other hand, are really not bad at
heart; sometimes they even possess a small saving spark of humour, and
frequently they attempt to read something other than _Printer’s Ink_.
But the full-fledged solicitor is beyond all hope. Coming in close
touch with the client who usually is an industrialist, capitalist,
stand-patter, and high-tariff enthusiast, the solicitor gradually
becomes a small edition of the man he serves, and reflects his ideas
in an even more brutal and unenlightened manner. In their minds there
is no room for change, unless it be change to a new kind of automobile
they are advertising, for new furniture, unless it be the collapsible
table of their latest client, for spring cleaning, unless thereby one
is introduced to the virtues of Germ-Destroying Soap. Things must
remain as they are and the leaders of commerce and industry must be
protected at all costs. To them there are no under-paid workers, no
social evil, no subsidized press, no restraint of free speech, no
insanitary plants, no child-labour, no infant mortality due to an
absence of maternity legislation, no good strikers, and no questionable
public utility corporations. Everything is as it should be, and any one
who attempts to effect a change is a socialist, and that ends it all.
Advertising is very largely controlled by men of this type. Is it any
wonder that it is of a reactionary and artificial nature, and that any
irresponsible promoter with money to spend and an article to sell, will
find a sympathetic and wily minister to execute his plans for him,
regardless of their effect on the economic or social life of the nation?
Turning, for the moment, from the people who create advertisements to
advertising as an institution, what is there to be said for or against
it? What is there to advance in justification of its existence, or
in favour of its suppression? Not knowing on which side the devil’s
advocate pleads his case, I shall take the liberty of representing
both sides, presenting as impartially as possible the cases for the
prosecution and defence and allowing the reader to bring in the verdict
in accordance with the evidence.
The first charge--that the low state of the press and the magazine
world is due solely to advertising--is not, I believe, wholly
fair. There is no use denying that advertising is responsible for
the limitation of free utterance and the nonexistence of various
independent and amusing publications. However, assuming that
advertising were utterly banished from the face of the earth, would
the murky atmosphere be cleared thereby? Would the press become free
and unafraid, and would the ideal magazine at last draw breath in the
full light of day? I think not. Years before advertising had attained
the importance it now enjoys, public service corporations and other
powerful vested interests had found other and equally effective methods
of shaping the news and controlling editorial policies. The fact
remains however, and it is a sufficiently black one, that advertising
is responsible for much of the corruption of our papers and other
publications, as well as for the absence of the type of periodicals
that make for the culture of a people and the enjoyment of good
literature. When a profiteering owner of a large department store
can succeed in keeping the fact of his conviction from appearing in
the news, while a number of smaller offenders are held up as horrid
examples, it is not difficult to decide whether or not it pays to
advertise. When any number of large but loosely conducted corporations
upon which the people and the nation depend, can prevent from
appearing in the press any information concerning their mismanagement,
inefficiency, and extravagance, or any editorial advocating government
control, one does not have to ponder deeply to determine the efficacy
of advertising. When articles or stories dealing with the unholy
conditions existing in certain industries, or touching on the risks of
motoring, the dangers of eating canned goods, or the impossibility of
receiving a dollar’s value for a dollar spent in a modern department
store, are rejected by many publications, regardless of their merit,
one does not have to turn to the back pages of the magazine in order
to discover the names and products of the advertisers paying for the
space. Indeed, one of the most regrettable features of advertising is
that it makes so many things possible for editors who will be good,
and so many things impossible for editors who are too honest and too
independent to tolerate dictation.
Another charge against advertising is that it promotes and encourages
the production of a vast quantity of costly articles many of which
duplicate themselves, and that this over-production of commodities,
many of them of highly questionable value, is injurious to the country
and economically unsound. This charge seems to be well founded in
fact, and illustrated only too convincingly in the list of our daily
purchases. Admitting that a certain amount of competition creates a
stimulating and healthy reaction, it still seems hardly reasonable that
a nation, to appear with a clean face each morning, should require the
services of a dozen producers of safety razors, and several hundred
producers of soap, and that the producers of razors and soap should
spend millions of dollars each year in advertising in order to remind
people to wash and shave. Nor does it seem to be a well-balanced
system of production when such commodities as automobiles, sewing
machines, face powders, toilet accessories, food products, wearing
apparel, candy, paint, furniture, rugs, tonics, machinery, and so
on _ad infinitum_ can exist in such lavish abundance. With so many
things of the same kind to choose from, there is scarcely any reason
to wonder that the purchasing public becomes addle-brained and fickle.
The over-production of both the essentials and non-essentials of
life is indubitably stimulated by advertising, with the result that
whenever business depression threatens the country, much unnecessary
unemployment and hardship arises because of an over-burdened market and
an industrial world crowded with moribund manufacturing plants. “Give
me a strong enough motor and I will make that table fly,” an aviator
once remarked. It could be said with equal truth, “Give me money enough
to spend in advertising and I will make any product sell.” Flying
tables, however, are not nearly so objectionable as a market glutted
with useless and over-priced wares, and an army of labour dependent for
its existence upon an artificially stimulated demand.
The claim that advertising undermines the habits of thrift of a
nation requires no defence. Products are made to be sold and it
is the principal function of advertising to sell them regardless
of their merits or the requirements of the people. Men and women
purchase articles to-day that would have no place in any socially and
economically safe civilization. As long as this condition continues,
money will be drawn out of the savings accounts of the many and
deposited in the commercial accounts of the few--a situation which
hardly makes for happy and healthy families.
It has been asserted by many that advertising is injurious to literary
style. I am far from convinced that this charge is true. In my belief
it has been neither an injurious nor helpful influence. If anything,
it has forced a number of writers to say a great deal in a few words,
which is not in itself an undesirable accomplishment. Nor do I believe
that advertising has recruited to its ranks a number of writers or
potential writers who might otherwise have given pearls of faith to the
world. However, if it has attracted any first-calibre writers, they
have only themselves to blame and there is still an opportunity for
them to scale the heights of literary eminence.
The worst has been said of advertising, I feel, when we agree that
it has contributed to the corruption of the press, that it does help
to endanger the economic safety of the nation, and that, to a great
extent, it appeals to the public in a false and unhealthy manner. These
charges certainly are sufficiently damaging. For the rest, let us admit
that advertising is more or less like all other businesses, subject to
the same criticisms and guilty of the same mistakes. Having admitted
this, let us assume the rôle of the attorney for the defence and see
what we can marshal in favour of our client.
First of all, I submit the fact that advertising has kept many artists
alive--not that I am thoroughly convinced that artists should be kept
alive, any more than poets or any other un-American breed; but for
all that I appeal to your humanitarian instincts when I offer this
fact in support of advertising, and I trust you will remember it when
considering the evidence.
In the second place, advertising is largely responsible for the
remarkable strides we have taken in the art of typography. If you will
examine much of the literature produced by advertising, you will find
there many excellent examples of what can be done with type. To-day no
country in the world is producing more artistic and authentic specimens
of typography than America, and this, I repeat, is largely due to the
influence of advertising.
We can also advance as an argument in favour of advertising that it has
contributed materially to a greater use of the tooth-brush and a more
diligent application of soap. Advertising has preached cleanliness,
preached frantically, selfishly and for its own ends, no doubt, but
nevertheless it has preached convincingly. It matters little what
means are used to achieve the end of cleanliness as long as the end is
achieved. This, advertising has helped to accomplish. The cleanliness
of the body and the cleanliness of the home as desirable virtues are
constantly being held up before the readers of papers and magazines. As
has been said, there are altogether too many different makes of soap
and other sanitary articles, but in this case permit us to modify the
statement by adding that it is much better to have too many of such
articles than too few. This third point in favour of advertising is no
small point to consider. The profession cannot be wholly useless, if
it has helped to make teeth white, faces clean, bodies healthy, homes
fresh and sanitary, and people more concerned with their bodies and the
way they treat them.
The fourth point in favour of advertising is that through the medium
of paid space in the papers and magazines certain deserving movements
have been able to reach a larger public and thus recruit from it new
and valuable members. This example illustrates the value of advertising
when applied to worthy ends. In all fairness we are forced to conclude,
that, after all, there is much in advertising that is not totally
depraved.
Now that we are about to rest the case, let us gaze once more through
the magic portals of the advertising world and refresh our eyes with
its beauty. On second glance we find there is something strangely
pathetic and wistfully human about this World That Never Was. It is
a world very much after our own creation, peopled and arranged after
our own yearnings and desires. It is a world of well regulated bowels,
cornless feet, and unblemished complexions, a world of perfectly
fitting clothes, completely equipped kitchens, and always upright and
smiling husbands. To this world of splendid country homes, humming
motors, and agreeable companions, prisoners on our own poor weary
world of reality may escape for a while to live a few short moments of
unqualified comfort and happiness. Even if they do return from their
flight with pockets empty and arms laden with a number of useless
purchases, they have had at least some small reward for their folly.
They have dwelt and sported with fascinating people in surroundings of
unsurpassed beauty. True, it is not such a world as Rembrandt would
have created, but he was a grim old realist, who, when he wanted to
paint a picture of a person cutting the nails, selected for his model
an old and unscrupulous woman, and cast around her such an atmosphere
of reality that one can almost hear the snip of the scissors as it
proceeds on its revolting business. How much better it would be done
in the advertising world! Here we would be shown a young and beautiful
girl sitting gracefully before her mirror and displaying just enough
of her body to convince the beholder that she was neither crippled nor
chicken-breasted, and all day long for ever and for ever she would sit
thus smiling tenderly as she clipped the pink little moon-flecked nails
from her pink little pointed fingers.
Yes, I fear it is a world of our own creation. Only a few persons
would stand long before Rembrandt’s crude example, while many would
dwell with delight on the curves and allurements of the maid in the
advertising world. Of course one might forget or never even discover
what she was doing, and assuming that one did, one would hardly dwell
upon such an unromantic occupation in connection with a creature so
fair and refined as this ideal young woman; but for all that, one would
at least have had the pleasure of contemplating her loveliness.
So many of us are poor and ill-favoured in this world of ours, so many
girls are not honestly able to purchase more than one frock or one hat
a year, that the occasion of the purchase takes on an importance far
beyond the appreciation of the average well-to-do person. It is fun,
therefore, to dwell upon the lines and features of a perfectly gowned
woman and to imagine that even though poor and ill-favoured, one might
possibly resemble in a modified way, the splendid model, if one could
only get an extra fifteen minutes off at lunch-time in order to attend
the bargain sale. There are some of us who are so very poor that from
a great distance we can enjoy without hope of participation the glory
and triumph of others. The advertising world supplies us with just this
sort of vicarious enjoyment, and, like all other kinds of fiction,
enables us to play for a moment an altogether pleasing rôle in a world
of high adventure.
Therefore let us not be too uncharitable to the advertising world.
While not forgetting its faults, let us also strive to remember its
virtues. Some things we cannot forgive it, some things we would prefer
to forget, but there are others which require less toleration and
fortitude to accept when once they have been understood.
As long as the printed word is utilized and goods are bought and sold,
there will be a place and a reason for advertising--not advertising
as we know it to-day, but of a saner and more useful nature. He would
be a doughty champion of the limitation of free speech who would
deny a man the right to tell the world that he is the manufacturer
of monkey-wrenches, and that he has several thousands of these same
wrenches on hand, all of which he is extremely anxious to sell.
Advertising, although a precocious child, is but in its infancy. In
spite of its rapid development and its robust constitution, it has not
yet advanced beyond the savage and bragging age. It will appeal to our
instincts of greed as quickly as to our instincts of home-building.
It will make friends with the snob that is in us, as readily as it
will avail itself of the companionship of our desire to be generous
and well-liked. It will frighten and bulldoze us into all sorts of
extravagant purchases with the same singleness of purpose that it will
plead with our self-respect in urging us to live cleaner and better
lives. It will use our pride and vanity for its own ends as coolly as
it will use our good nature or community spirit. It will run through
the whole gamut of human emotions, selecting therefrom those best
suited to its immediate ends. Education alone will make the child
behave--not the education of the child so much as the education of the
reader.
Advertising thrives to-day in the shadows created by big business,
and, as a consequence, if it would retain its master’s favour it must
justify his methods, and practise his evil ways. Here it must be
added that there are some honest advertising agencies which refuse to
accept the business of dishonest concerns. It must also be added that
there are some magazines and newspapers which will refuse to accept
unscrupulous advertisements. These advertisements must be notoriously
unscrupulous, however, before they meet this fate. There are even such
creatures as honest manufacturers, but unfortunately for the profession
they too rarely advertise. As a whole, advertising is committed to the
ways of business, and as the ways of business are seldom straight and
narrow, advertising perforce must follow a dubious path. We shall let
it rest at that.