MR. BOWSER thumbed a buzzer. His secretary popped into his office. All
his staff popped when Mr. Bowser buzzed. “Minktakmemo,” commanded that
high-powered executive. Translated this meant, “Mink, take memo.” Mr.
Bowser avoided the use of useless words such as “a” and “the”; he had
calculated that they waste from twenty-one to twenty-seven minutes of a
busy man’s time per month. To get into the habit of eliminating these
words might have proved difficult for an ordinary man, but not for J.
Sanford Bowser. He was not ordinary, and he was, distinctly, a doer.
There was a doing air about him from hair tonic to rubber heels.
“Get-There Men have the Get-Things-Done Habit,” he liked to say. As
president of The Bowsers, Inc., publicity engineers, “Let The Bowsers
Put You on the Map!”—slogans leaped from his lips as naturally as
rabbits have children, and with even less effort. He was passionately
devoted to the science of slogan making; to coin a striking trade name
for a new can opener, and couple with it some pregnant selling
epigram—that, to Mr. Bowser, was almost the apex of human achievement.
His mind, by long training, plucked from the air pithy punch
phrases—his own expression—as swiftly and subconsciously as a man
tottering on the brink of a sneeze reaches for his handkerchief.
“Minktakmemo.”
Miss Mink poised her silver-plated pencil—it was a Bowser-advertised
product—a Rite-Riter, “The Pencil That Does Everything But Think”—over
her book. Mr. Bowser cleared his throat.
“Memo to Mrs. Bowser,” he dictated staccatoly, “_in re_ teething
ring for baby. I have personally tried all advertised brands of
teething rings. My tests show most scientific ring to be Cohnco
Ring, Toy Efficient for Teething Tots. (N. B. Pretty good
slogan). Cohnco Rings are (a) less rubbery in taste, (b) more
durable, and (c) fit well in the mouth. If you check with me on
Cohnco Rings I’ll order one gross sent to our house at once.
“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”
Mr. Bowser lit a Marlborough-Somerset, “Each Puff Has a Pedigree,”
smoothed his straw colored hair, and swooped down on a pile of mail.
“Minktakletter.”
Miss Mink prepared to take a letter.
“Woonsocket Kumfee-Fit Undervest Co., Woonsocket, R. I. Attention Mr.
Snedecker——”
And, thus launched, Mr. Bowser whizzed through his correspondence like a
buzz saw through a ladyfinger, ejecting punch-laden sentences even as a
machine gun ejects used cartridges.
A person unfamiliar with the principles of high-speed efficiency on
which Mr. Bowser conducted his life, business and domestic, might have
thought that Mrs. Bowser was in Fiji or Lapland or some equally remote
spot. As a matter of fact the surveyed distance between Mr. Bowser and
Mrs. Bowser at that precise moment was twelve feet, for she occupied the
office next to his, and, as his partner and associate publicity
engineer, herself daily coined Slogans That Sell and mothered Phrases
That Put Products on the Map.
She would have been the first to reject with scorn the suggestion that
he should stick his head through the doorway that connected their
offices, and tell her, verbally, about the teething rings.
“The Secret of our Success,” she would have said—for she, too, talked
like a twenty-four-sheet poster—“is Organization. Nothing is Too Small
to be Organized. In our country home, Caslon Farm, we have a model
kitchen and by motion study we have cut down the motions our cook uses
in making rice pudding from forty-three to seven, or, with raisins,
eight. Organization! It used to take our nurse twenty-six minutes by
stop watch to bathe our baby; now she does it in fourteen; we saved
seven minutes just by using blotters instead of towels. Yes, Henry T.
Organization is first vice-president of Success, Progress & Co.”
Mr. Bowser’s memo _in re_ teething rings reached Mrs. Bowser’s desk
within an hour. Mrs. Bowser—she had been Pandora Irene Kunkle, of
Dingman, Tinney & Kunkle, “Advertising in All Its Arteries,” until a
mutual devotion to slogans had brought her and Mr. Bowser into
partnership, commercial and matrimonial—was a well-developed,
copper-haired woman, hovering around thirty-five. She had a sharp chin
and wore a stiff linen collar.
“Gussing, take a memo,” she directed.
Miss Gussing also wore a stiff collar and had a light blond mustache,
but at heart she was a woman. The Bowsers always called the women of
their company by their last names; Mrs. Bowser was an ardent feminist
and felt that to call the female slogan makers Ruth or Hattie or Olivia
was too feminine, and to call them Miss not in keeping with the spirit
of camaraderie which prevailed about the Bowser office except during one
short painful period each year when increases in salaries were being
discussed. Mrs. Bowser stared thoughtfully from the window of the lofty
Bowser Building—“Built—like the Himalayas—for the Ages,” and her
gray-green eyes roved over the kaleidoscope of New York’s roofs—red,
green, brown, purple.
“Memo to Mr. Bowser,” she said, “_in re_ teething ring for baby.
Cohnco Rings may be O. K. scientifically, but our Mr. Hencastle
reports that he is soliciting the account of the Ess-Bee-Dee
people who make Kiddie-Kutter Rings. I therefore think it wise
to choose Kiddie-Kutter Rings for our son because of the effect
on the trade. I do not check with your suggestion that we get a
gross. One ring will be enough. This proves my contention that
no man understands children or the Feminine Appeal in
Advertising Copy.
“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.”
Having discharged this wood-pulp arrow at her spouse, Mrs. Bowser tapped
her front teeth with her pencil for three seconds; then, briskly:
“Gussing, take another memo.”
“Yes, Bowser,” said Miss Gussing, who had a bass voice. Mrs. Bowser
herself insisted on this method of address; it gave her a hearty
man-to-man feeling with Miss Gussing. With Mr. Bowser the case was
somewhat different; his male hired help with salaries of more than five
thousand dollars a year called him J. S. B. as more intimate than Mister
and not so presumptuous as Sanford. Lesser employees called him Chief,
and still lesser ones Mistered him.
“Memo,” dictated Mrs. Bowser, “to Mr. Bowser.”
“Shall I incorporate it with the first one?” asked Miss Gussing.
Mrs. Bowser gave her a look fraught more with pain than anger.
“Gussing,” she said, the sweetness of patience struggling with the
vinegar of reproof, “must I remind you that the rule of The Bowsers,
Inc., is: One subject to one memo? Simplicity, Gussing, is one of the
First Flowers in the Garden of Organization. M-m-m-m-m—not bad, that.
Take that down, Gussing. I may be able to use that phrase in the
Bedfello—the Hot Water Bottle Beautiful—campaign. Now take a memo—a
separate one if you please, to Mr. Bowser.”
The chastened Gussing suspended her pencil over a virgin sheet.
“_In re_ name for new cleaning powder,” said Mrs. Bowser. “I
have noted with care list of names for new cleaning powder
suggested by you. I do not check with any of them.
“‘GARFINKLE’S Pride of the Bathroom’ has a high-class appeal but
is too long.
“‘KLASSIC-KLEENER—Out, darned spot’—is good and would permit a
tie-up with Shakespere in the ads, but the profanity might
offend some possible buyers.
“‘TUB-PUP—Just Sic it on the Dirt’—is snappy but hardly
serious enough for a product that retails at one dollar a can.
Humor has no place in business.
“‘ROSE-DUST—The Powder That Perfumes as it Cleans’—is the best
on your list because it suggests quality and also Hammers Home”
(caps, Gussing) “the one distinctive point about the new
powder—i.e., the fact that it has a pleasant smell. It is
rather more like fresh pine shavings than roses, I think. In the
name and slogan we must put across the punch idea that this
good-smelling powder is also a cleaning agent with a kick. I
attach list of names I have developed.
“Please let me have your reactions to these names very soon as
Peabody Garfinkle called up today to ask when he can go ahead
and order cans and labels for the new powder. He wants to get it
on the dealers’ shelves in time for spring house cleaning.
Action please.
“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.”
Mrs. Bowser skimmed with agile eye her list headed “Things To Get Done
This Day,” then dictated:
“Memo to Mr. Bowser. _In re_ christening baby. Please note that
baby will be one year old tomorrow. He should be christened
then. It is not intelligent to continue to call him Baby and
Junior indefinitely. I suggest that you send me without delay
list of names you consider suitable for him. I will give them my
careful attention and I hope we can reach an agreement today on
this subject.
“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.”
Mrs. Bowser tapped her teeth for two seconds, glanced at her watch—a
Krafty-Kronometer, “The Personality Timepiece with the Different Tick”
(her own slogan)—and then became all animation.
“Gussing,” she shot out, “get the Chicago and Salt Lake City offices on
the long distance, send Meldrum, O’Grady and Kitchell to me at once, and
order a taxi to be here in fifteen minutes to take me to a conference
with Miss Switzer of the I-Say-Ma-Ma Mechanical Doll Company at the Jill
Club.”
Miss Gussing bustled out and Mrs. Bowser tore into her work like a
tornado through a picnic of paper dolls.
When Mrs. Bowser returned from her luncheon conference glowing with
triumph over the fact that she had sold Miss Switzer the idea of making
some of the dolls say “Pa-pa,” she found on her broad,
plate-glassed-topped, thoroughly organized desk two memos on the bright
orange paper Mr. Bowser used so that memos emanating from the
presidential office might not be confused with the pallid blue and
punchless pink of lesser memoranda. She read them.
“_In re_ slogan for new cleaning powder. I do not like any names you
have suggested.
“‘LILY-LAVA—Makes Your Bathroom a Conservatory’ has possibilities, but
my opinion is that many housewives do not know what a conservatory is.”
Mrs. Bowser, as a fighting feminist, frowned at this slight on the
vocabulary of her sex, and read on:
“‘GARFINKO NOSTINKO—Easy on the Nostrils but Hard on the
Dirt’—is the best, but it just misses hitting me hard enough.
Somehow it lacks dignity; I FEEL this lack. I shall concentrate
on this problem tonight after dinner and see if I can evolve a
Clarion Phrase That Will Shout Its Message from the Shelves. I
will let you know my final choice tomorrow.
“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”
Mrs. Bowser emitted a sound resembling “Humph.”
“His final choice!” she remarked, frowning at the buzzer buttons on her
desk, of which there were enough to make a vest. “His final choice! As
if I personally did not sell Peabody Garfinkle the Bowsers’ Big
Idea—Words That Hit Buyers in the Pocketbook! As if I myself didn’t get
his signature on a three-hundred-thousand-dollar contract. Now Bowser
acts as if it were his product. Humph! Just like a man. Garfinko
Nostinko does not lack dignity. Printed in orange-red on a deep purple
background it would Hit Any Housewife in the Buying Eye. I’m going to
fight for it. He is getting too bossy lately, anyhow.”
She was in a decidedly truculent frame of mind as she picked up the
second orange memo from her spouse:
“To Mrs. Bowser. _In re_ christening baby. Have given this
matter much thought. Have decided that the following points must
be considered in choosing name:
“_A._ Our baby is no ordinary baby. An Unusual Child should have
an Unusual Name.
“_B._ Obviously, ordinary names, such as Robert, Henry and
Thomas, will not do; they are for ordinary infants.
“_C._ Our baby will be much in the public eye. As the son of The
Bowsers, Inc., he will receive much publicity. Later when he is
head of the company his name will be a household word. His name
must be one that leaps out of a printed page and has strong
memory value.
“_D._ To get a really distinctive name for him we must COIN ONE!
We must use just as much scientific care in coining it as if it
were the name of a product for which we were trying to create a
National Market.
“_E._ Therefore, in considering names for baby, ask yourself
these questions:
“1. Does it express baby’s personality?
“2. Is it distinctively individual?
“3. Is it easy to spell?
“4. Is it easy to say?
“5. Is it easy to get over the telephone?
“6. Does it look well in type? (N. B. Have all names set
up in 12-point Caslon, new style.)
“7. Has it a flowing, harmonious sound?
“8. Does it begin with some incisive, unusual,
INTEREST-GRABBING letter, like K, U, Y, V or Z?
“9. Has it that Can’t-Be-Forgotten PUNCH that makes it
Bite into a Man’s Memory and STICK there?
“_F._ I attach list of names that answer these requirements.
These names have been selected from more than six hundred coined
by myself and the staff of the Product-Naming Department. To
which one do you react most strongly? Action, please!
“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”
Mrs. Bowser, with frosty eye scrutinized the list, then tossed it on her
desk with unmistakable petulance. She had read:
“Names for Baby:
“Ugobono Bowser
“Veekar Bowser
“Zail Bowser
“Zazzar Bowser
“Zerric Bowser
“Yondo Bowser
“Vindo Bowser
“Yubar Bowser
“Kinzo Bowser.”
If it is possible for a lady, a sloganeer and a college graduate, to
snort, Mrs. Bowser, at that moment, snorted. She pronged at one of the
buzzer buttons with an outraged finger. Miss Gussing shot in as if from
a pneumatic tube.
“Gussing, take a memo. To Mr. Bowser. _In re_ christening baby.
I have noted with care your lists of names (baby). I
emphatically do not check with you on any of them. There is only
one name I want to have baby christened. It is not on your list.
“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.
“Gussing,” snapped Mrs. Bowser, “please deliver this memo to Mr. Bowser
personally.”
Miss Gussing vanished as if she had seen a boojum, but reappeared again
after a brief interval, in her hand one of the sacred orange memos. Mrs.
Bowser examined it.
“Memo to Mrs. Bowser. _In re_ christening baby. I am always open
to GOOD suggestions. What is yours?
“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”
Mrs. Bowser’s eyes sparkled with determination.
“Gussing, take a memo,” she said in a crossing-the-Rubicon voice. “Memo
to Mr. Bowser. _In re_ christening baby.
“JOHN.
“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.”
Miss Gussing regarded her chief blankly.
“John?” queried Miss Gussing. “John what?”
“Nothing. Just ‘JOHN.’ All caps, Gussing,” said Mrs. Bowser, and her
protruded chin symbolized a made-up mind.
She signed the memo so fiercely that she broke her pen—a Bowser-sold
Product—“The Last-a-Lifetime Pen—Shakspere Would Have Used One.”
“Now,” ordered Mrs. Bowser, “take this to Mr. Bowser at once and see
that it is called to his attention.”
Miss Gussing bounded from the room on her rubber heels—they were
“Spine-Pals—Your Backbone’s Best Buddy.” Soon she bounded back. She
carried reverently an orange memo which she placed on the desk. Mrs.
Bowser plucked it up, read it, scowled.
“Memo to Mrs. Bowser. _In re_ christening baby. I cannot permit
my son to be named John. Suggest conference on this subject in
Quiet Room at 4:40. Do you check?
“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”
“Memo, Gussing.” Mrs. Bowser was almost feverish. “To Mr.
Bowser. _In re_ christening baby. Must remind you baby is my son
as well as yours. I insist on John. I will have conference with
you in Quiet Room at 4:40.
“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.”
The Quiet Room was a Bowser institution. It was his idea, and he was
proud of it.
“It’s Psychological!” he exclaimed. “I Believe in Psychology. Do you
know”—here he lowered his voice as one imparting a
confidence—“Psychology Plays a Big Part in Modern Business?”
He contrived to give the impression to some of his clients that he, Mr.
Bowser, had discovered psychology. At no small expense he had installed
a laboratory as part of the Bowser establishment, and to it he brought
all prospective clients that they might observe his two hired
psychologists, grave men, peering darkly into microscopes or chevying
guinea pigs through mazes.
“We are endeavoring to determine,” Mr. Bowser would explain, “the basic
psychological reason why New York ladies prefer pink underthings while
Boston ladies prefer them white. Ultimately, through psychology, we will
be able to Condition the Buying Habits of the Consumer.”
“This Bowser is a deep fellow,” the clients would say to one another.
“He’s scientific. He gets right down to the bottom of things.” And they
would hasten to inscribe their names on the dotted line.
The Quiet Room had been planned by the psychologists, after a series of
experiments that cost the lives of uncounted guinea pigs.
“This,” said Mr. Bowser, in introducing the Quiet Room to his staff, “is
a Thinking Chamber. Here you can bring your Big Problems and in the
Thought-Compelling Silence Think Through to a Sane Solution. When your
Thinker is Fagged, come in here. Just put up a sign outside the door,
‘Someone is Now Thinking in this Room. Quiet, please,’ and no one, not
even the president, will dare disturb you.
“Of course,” added Mr. Bowser, with a smile at once playful and yet with
its serious side, “I hope that this will not be construed as a
suggestion that you come in here to take a nap. That,” he concluded,
“would be beneath contempt.”
The Quiet Room idea had worked out well; three pairs of copy
writers—one male and one female to the pair—had announced their
engagements since its introduction.
The Quiet Room was done in mouse gray—walls, carpets, furniture, even
the lights were all of that inaudible hue.
There were no pictures to distract attention; just a simple sign in gray
letters, “Quiet, please. This is a Room for Thought.”
To this room Mrs. Bowser repaired at 4:40 precisely. Mr. Bowser, himself
the epitome of punctuality, was just opening the door as she reached it.
“Good afternoon, Bowser,” he said pleasantly.
“Good afternoon, Bowser,” she returned. They had agreed that in business
hours they would be strictly businesslike.
“No Sentiment Between Nine and Five,” he had proposed as, on their
honeymoon, they motored through New England looking for billboard sites.
And she had agreed heartily.
They hung up the “Quiet, please” sign outside and sat in mouse-toned
chairs at a mouse-toned table. Mr. Bowser spread out a sheaf of memos.
“I brought the correspondence in this matter,” he explained.
“Bowser,” said his wife, “I want to say right here and now that I won’t
stand for one of your coined names for my baby. I want to christen him
John.” She glanced at a list. “Yubar,” she said disdainfully. “Sounds
like a varnish.”
“It strikes me,” said Mr. Bowser with dignity, “that Yubar is an
especially distinctive name.”
“Yes, for a varnish,” flashed Mrs. Bowser. “But our son is not a
varnish.”
The masculine Bowser frowned, then spoke in a low-pitched voice:
“You are getting excited, Bowser. You are raising your voice. Permit me
to remind you that this is the Quiet Room, not the smoking room at the
Jill Club.”
“Don’t use that tone to me, Bowser. I’ll raise my voice if I please.”
“But think of the employees!”
“I’m thinking of my son.”
“My son, if I may say so.”
“Your son!” Mrs. Bowser exclaimed. “You talk as if you’d bought him from
a jobber.”
“Bowser! In the Quiet Room too.”
“Quiet Room be hanged!”
“You amaze me. Frankly, this conference cannot proceed while you are in
this mood. We are here to confer, not to shout.”
“Very well. You agree to John?”
“No. Emphatically no. I will not agree to John, I tell you.”
“Who’s shouting now?”
“I’ll shout if I please. I veto John.”
“Oh, you do, do you! What am I—a rubber stamp?” Mrs. Bowser’s eyes were
snapping. “Don’t try that he-man business on me, Bowser. First you try
to legislate through your own slogan for the cleaning powder, and now
you are trying to give my son a name like a patented stove polish. I say
John. John! John!”
Her voice was shrill and his was not exactly suppressed.
“Do you realize,” he said, “that we are having our first quarrel?”
“I guess I have good reason to quarrel. I want to name the baby John. My
mind’s made up.”
“No. Never. Not John.”
“Well, what do you want to call him?”
Mr. Bowser compressed his lips masterfully.
“Kinzo,” he said loudly.
“Kinzo?” she protested.
“Kinzo Bowser,” he repeated. “An almost perfect name! Look,” he went on
in his selling voice. “Just say it over. Just roll the syllables over on
your tongue. Kinzo Bowser! Hasn’t that a smooth, lyric quality? Kin-zo
Bow-ser! Get it?”
He whipped from his pocket a large card on which he had printed KINZO
BOWSER.
“Look!” he cried triumphantly. “Hasn’t that name Eye-Stabbing Power? See
how that ‘K’ sticks out. Notice how that final ‘O’ ends the word with a
snap. Why, that name fairly sings out loud. Kinzo Bowser! I tell you it
would stand out on a dealer’s shelf like a wart on a bald head!”
“Who wants our baby’s name to stand out on a shelf?” Mrs. Bowser
demanded.
“Oh!” said Mr. Bowser with some slight confusion. “I meant in case he
ever manufactured canned goods. He might, you know. We owe it to him to
pick a name that would be useful under any and all circumstances, don’t
we?”
“John!” was all Mrs. Bowser said.
“John?” Mr. Bowser’s voice had many elements of a roar in it. “John?
Plebeian! Common! One instantly associates John with mediocrity, with
nincompoopity. Why, when I hear the name John it always suggests a man
who sleeps in his underwear and thinks grapefruit is poisonous.”
“Your name is John,” his wife reminded him.
Mr. Bowser flushed.
“Am I to blame for that?” he inquired warmly. “You notice I call myself
J. Sanford. Besides, my father was a farmer, not a publicity engineer.
He knew about alfalfa but not about the Psychology of A Name With A
Punch. I tell you I won’t even consider John. I want Kinzo.”
“Bah! Sounds like a Japanese acrobat or a cure for flat feet.”
He fastened upon her an eye impatient and stern.
“Apparently you haven’t grasped the first principles of Names that Mean
Something. Well, I won’t argue with you while you’re in this state.
Let’s discuss something else.”
“John,” said Mrs. Bowser with set jaw.
“Let’s postpone that subject, please,” he said. “Peabody Garfinkle just
phoned me that he must start printing labels for his cans tomorrow. He
wants the design and name by one o’clock. He’ll use any one our
organization works out. That’s Client Confidence, eh?”
“I hope it is not misplaced,” said Mrs. Bowser, her voice scented with a
faint perfume of irony.
Mr. Bowser ignored this observation.
“Sorry I couldn’t check on any of your slogans for the cleaning powder,”
he remarked with a great show of amiability. “One of yours—Garfinko
Nostinko—almost made the grade, but not quite. Just didn’t pull the
trigger with me, somehow. Your slogan is excellent—‘Easy on the
Nostrils But Hard on the Dirt!’ Very pretty, very pretty. Pithy too.
But—a little long, don’t you think?”
“No.”
“But, Bowser, don’t you recall that our Doctor Butterfield worked out in
the laboratory that the Human Eye Can Only Rivet on Seven Words at Once?
Your slogan has nine. If you could somehow boil it down——”
“I’ll boil nothing down. I like it as it is.”
Mr. Bowser shrugged his well-tailored shoulders.
“And fly in the face of psychology?” he asked gently, but as one who is
hurt.
Mrs. Bowser bridled.
“Don’t look at me as if I were a naughty child, Bowser!” she ejaculated.
“I’m not a green copy writer that you’ve caught wearing an unadvertised
brand of rubber heels. I was a Successful Slogan Builder before I ever
met you, please remember.”
“Come now, control yourself. At least let me tell you about the Big
Thought I just had before I came in here.”
Mrs. Bowser tapped her teeth with her pencil. Mr. Bowser jumped to his
feet and when he spoke his voice held chords of rapture and his eyes
were alight with the joy of creation.
“Listen,” he began. Then in his special slogan voice he declaimed:
“Smelly-Welly—dirt-devourer!”
Mrs. Bowser regarded him without enthusiasm.
“Not bad,” she admitted.
“Not bad?” he cried. “Great Scott, woman, it’s perfect! Smelly-Welly!
Why, it’s an inspiration. Came to me like a flash from the sky.
Smelly-Welly! Easy to say, easy to spell and chock-full of punch. Look
here, Bowser, just look here!” From an inside pocket he took a strip of
cardboard on which he had hastily lettered in large black print: