My friend did not pursue his inquiry to my personal disadvantage, but
seemed to prefer a more general philosophy of the matter.
“I have often wondered,” he said, “at the enormous expansion of
advertising, and doubted whether it was not mostly wasted. But my
author, here, has suggested a brilliant fact which I was unwittingly
groping for. When you take up a Sunday paper”--I shuddered, and my
friend smiled intelligence--“you are simply appalled at the miles of
announcements of all sorts. Who can possibly read them? Who cares even
to look at them? But if you want something in particular--to furnish a
house, or buy a suburban place, or take a steamer for Europe, or go, to
the theatre--then you find out at once who reads the advertisements, and
cares to look at them. They respond to the multifarious wants of the
whole community. You have before you the living operation of that law of
demand and supply which it has always been such a bore to hear about.
As often happens, the supply seems to come before the demand; but that’s
only an appearance. You wanted something, and you found an offer to meet
your want.”
“Then you don’t believe that the offer to meet your want suggested it?”
“I see that my author believes something of the kind. We may be full of
all sorts of unconscious wants which merely need the vivifying influence
of an advertisement to make them spring into active being; but I have a
feeling that the money paid for advertising which appeals to potential
wants is largely thrown away. You must want a thing, or think you want
it; otherwise you resent the proffer of it as a kind of impertinence.”
“There are some kinds of advertisements, all the same, that I read
without the slightest interest in the subject matter. Simply the beauty
of the style attracts me.”
“I know. But does it ever move you to get what you don’t want?”
“Never; and I should be glad to know what your author thinks of that sort
of advertising: the literary, or dramatic, or humorous, or quaint.”
“He doesn’t contemn it, quite. But I think he feels that it may have had
its day. Do you still read such advertisements with your early zest?”
“No; the zest for nearly everything goes. I don’t care so much for
Tourguenief as I used. Still, if I come upon the jaunty and laconic
suggestions of a certain well-known clothing-house, concerning the
season’s wear, I read them with a measure of satisfaction. The
advertising expert--”
“This author calls him the adsmith.”
“Delightful! Ad is a loathly little word, but we must come to it. It’s
as legitimate as lunch. But as I was saying, the adsmith seems to have
caught the American business tone, as perfectly as any of our novelists
have caught the American social tone.”
“Yes,” said my friend, “and he seems to have prospered as richly by it.
You know some of those chaps make fifteen or twenty thousand dollars by
adsmithing. They have put their art quite on a level with fiction
pecuniarily.”
“Perhaps it is a branch of fiction.”
“No; they claim that it is pure fact. My author discourages the
slightest admixture of fable. The truth, clearly and simply expressed,
is the best in an ad.
“It is best in a wof, too. I am always saying that.”
“Wof?”
“Well, work of fiction. It’s another new word, like lunch or ad.”
“But in a wof,” said my friend, instantly adopting it, “my author
insinuates that the fashion of payment tempts you to verbosity, while in
an ad the conditions oblige you to the greatest possible succinctness.
In one case you are paid by the word; in the other you pay by the word.
That is where the adsmith stands upon higher moral ground than the
wofsmith.”
“I should think your author might have written a recent article in
‘The---------, reproaching fiction with its unhallowed gains.”
“If you mean that for a sneer, it is misplaced. He would have been
incapable of it. My author is no more the friend of honesty in
adsmithing than he is of propriety, He deprecates jocosity in
apothecaries and undertakers, not only as bad taste, but as bad business;
and he is as severe as any one could be upon ads that seize the attention
by disgusting or shocking the reader.
“He is to be praised for that, and for the other thing; and I shouldn’t
have minded his criticising the ready wofsmith. I hope he attacks the
use of display type, which makes our newspapers look like the poster-
plastered fences around vacant lots. In New York there is only one paper
whose advertisements are not typographically a shock to the nerves.”
“Well,” said my friend, “he attacks foolish and ineffective display.”
“It is all foolish and ineffective. It is like a crowd of people trying
to make themselves heard by shouting each at the top of his voice.
A paper full of display advertisements is an image of our whole congested
and delirious state of competition; but even in competitive conditions it
is unnecessary, and it is futile. Compare any New York paper but one
with the London papers, and you will see what I mean. Of course I refer
to the ad pages; the rest of our exception is as offensive with pictures
and scare heads as all the rest. I wish your author could revise his
opinions and condemn all display in ads.”
“I dare say he will when he knows what you think,” said my friend, with
imaginable sarcasm.