Great Ideas In Advertising

About the Book

Lavidge & Associates In the early 1900s, the Lord & Thomas Advertising Agency wrote the following ad (modestly edited) to promote its company. Common Sense Above All Things Scores Uncommon Results in Advertising Wherever you see dramatic success in advertising, you will find that common sense is its basic formula. • Study advertising and, above all things, that factor will impress you. • Circus ideas are of an enlightened age. Vanities and furbelows have no place in salesmanship to the millions. • Yet how comparatively few men recognize that simple precept. Take an issue of any publication. See how simply phrased, simply designed ads stand out above their fellows. • Mark the contrast between dignity and acrobatics. Between a well-dressed, coldly logical master salesman and a rival with pink spats. They carry conviction in exactly the same measure. • So when men ask us the out¬standing secret of our copy, we quote the genius of simple, common sense. • We know that method achieves unique results. For we have proved it countless times. Our organization is built of people whose religion is that formula. • They judge advertising for what it is. They do not tamper with its force; do not handicap it with the bizarre. • They recognize that to be successful, advertising must be sincere; must convey the force of conviction. • Put that behind any business that could succeed without advertising, and sales will multiply. • Put any kind of advertising behind a business that could not succeed without it and little will result. We hold that no business which could not succeed without us could gain the heights because of us. A century later, the same common sense in advertising holds true.

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