[_A letter from Mr. Gray, of Gray Matter Service, to Mr. Ribstone,
proprietor of the Ginger Cubes._]
MY DEAR MR. RIBSTONE: I was glad to get your note from Kill Kare
Kountry Klub, and to hear that you have been taking a few days’
recreation. You will return, I am confident, much refreshed and eager
to take up the problems that confront us.
I have been a little disappointed at not getting a definite
authorization from you to go ahead with our plans. We have had
tentative advances from other possible clients in this same general
field, but I have put them off, desiring not to take on any accounts
that might possibly conflict with the Ginger Cubes. To be perfectly
frank, the thing that has appealed to me about Ginger Cubes is the
bully opportunity for public service in a big way, and the chance to
institutionalize a product whose possibilities have filled the members
of our organization with unusual enthusiasm.
Ever since we first began talking institutional advertising for Ginger
Cubes, a real thought impression has been epitomizing itself in my
mind, and our Department of Cumulative Service has been giving the
matter special study and analytical constructive investigation. We have
been going right back to fundamentals on this proposition, studying the
different sides of the problem along all its different angles. It will
indeed be a source of satisfaction if we are accorded the opportunity
to work with you. Our Mr. Geniall was saying in conference yesterday,
“I am convinced I would rather be associated with the Ginger Cubes
Corporation than any other company I know of, because what I have heard
of the quality of men that make up that organization and the quality
of service they would expect convinces me it would be an educative
experience to coöperate with that firm. The product-attributes of their
Ginger Cubes fill me with enthusiasm, and I feel that if they were our
clients we could work for them as personal friends, and not in any
cold-blooded businesslike fashion.”
That is the way we want you, Mr. Ribstone, to feel towards our
organization.
It is not our desire to merely build a number of advertisements which
may be combined together in a more or less connected series by some
such device as art treatment. Art is all very well as a handmaiden of
advertising, but for a monumental campaign you need the inspiration of
a Big Idea, a genuinely dominating thought that will clarionize every
piece of copy and tie the whole together in a culminating increment of
public consciousness.
Advertising is either Product-Advertising or Institutional-Advertising.
The functions of the first are obvious--