What Advertising Might Become
I.—Its True Function in Modern Commerce IT is a curious fact that man usually tackles a science or interest first from that end which is farthest ironi his immediate concern and has least direct utility. Ills earliest scientific interest was astronomy, dealing with the remotest things he knew ; it long preceded any real science of economics ; decoration and ornament long Receded dress. The useful comes last. (The fact can be recommended to the attention of cast-iron " economic determinists.") One is reminded of this in considering the development of advertising. That activity, in the sense of information conveyed by the prodocer or seller to consumer or buyer, is an indispensable part of the economic activities by which we live, and is destined to play an increasing role as those activities gain in complexity. Yet the word has an unpleasant connotation of cheap-jack parasitism, the noisy trumpeting of dubious wares. Advertising in that sense, the aspect which is most pushed under our notice, is not indispensable at all to sound commerce, and is probably, in the final analysis from the point of view of the community's general interest, almost pure waste. An hour's railway journey brings home the fact that perhaps a million pounds have been spent on one side of the line to convince you that A's soap or cigarettes or toothpaste will give you joy inexpressible and all others' deceive you ; and another million on the other side of the line to try to convince you that B's toothpaste, soap, or cigarettes are miles in merit beyond A's, the one million very nearly cancelling out the other, the truth being that there is not a ha'porth of difference between the rival products, and that whichever you buy you will have to pay for this meaningless trumpeting in the price ultimately charged You. Various ingenious economic defences of this kind of advertising have been made, but much of it—and this kind is still that upon which the greater part of adver- tising expenditure is still made—is parasitic and wasteful, the least defensible aspect of commercial competition and one likely, with the growth of industrial combination, to he more and more eliminated. If the case for adver- thing rested mainly on what could be said for costly com- petitive drum-banging about things of daily consumption, organized industry would one day rise and sweep most of it away by common consent.
But advertising will, let us hope, come to mean some- thing very different : the science of conveying information which really adds to the value of the exchange from seller to buyer, or producer to consumer—and for that matter from consumer to producer. That science is at present only in its infancy, and sadly needs a more systematic organization. And as certain aspects of it have a very direct bearing upon the special needs of British industry and the special character of Britain's economic situation, it would seem worth while to consider them in some detail.
The simplest form of advertising which is not mere puffery, which is indeed a condition of those exchanges upon which all commerce rests, was described by Montaigne nearly four hundred years ago. " In every town," he wrote in effect, " I would like to see established an official with a great register. On one side would be inscribed all those things which their owners desired to sell : a pearl necklace, a horse, a house ; on the other side of the register a list of all those things sought by those desiring to purchase, this burgher, it may be; needing a horse, that one a house. And it would be the duty of this official to make known the existence of the two parties, the one to the other." For, he went on to explain, too often it happens that the 'nail wanting the horse does not know of the horse for sale, or vice terra, and both are the losers by this ignorance.
Now Montaigne has stated here, in its simplest and clearest form, the basic problem of all commerce : how to bring into effective contact the party who needs some- thing with the party who can supply it. This knowledge is the magic pass-key which unlocks all the doors. It would mean in its perfected form the adjustment of pro- duction to consumption, the stabilization of prices, the stoppage of waste, the end of commercial depressions, of unemployment. . . .
And the astonishing thing is that Montaigne's register is still waiting to be created ; the dissemination of the kind of knowledge which he indicated, the making of those innumerable contacts which are of the very essence of commerce, without which there can be none, is still a matter largely of haphazard gueSs-work, hit or miss, par- ticularly in the most fundamental and ancient of all industries, agriculture. Every year that has passed since Montaigne wrote, marked as each has been by an increasing division of labour, makes the need of disseminating the 'knowledge of certain facts greater and greater ; but still no register. When Montaigne wrote Europe lived mainly by a self-sufficing manor economy ; an estate produced mainly. what the estate consumed, and so the knowledge which enabled the producer to adjust production to con- sumption was easily attainable : the producer was him- self the consumer. If we are aware that the world has passed out of the manor economy, we have not yet acted upon the knowledge to the extent of making Montaigne's register.
What is the relation of all this to the science of advertising ? Let us see. These lines are written on a small Essex farm devoted mainly to the raising of cattle and pigs. Its success is dependent, among other things, upon the most advan- tageous purchase of calves of a certain type, their sale as store cattle or dairy cows ; upon utilizing, for pigs, bean stubble which is available in the autumn in various parts of the country, and upon such incidentals as the purchase of cheap straw for bedding. Success here depends upon a number of economic contacts very much more numerous and intricate than appears at first sight, necessitating a knowledge of where calves of the right kind at the right price are obtainable at the right time ; what graziers and fatteners need store cattle, and dairies dairy cows, at the precise time this farm has them for sale ; what farmers within a given radius have bean stubble for sale, what within that radius, straw. (I am leaving out of account for the moment the more temote contacts—e.g., will the world need more or less pork next year ?) Now it is a physical impossibility for the bailiff of a small farm to make these contacts personally. If he tried it, he would do nothing else, and then it would be badly done. He resorts usually to the method which was that of Montaigne's time. When he wants to buy a calf or sell a cow he goes to the local market. There may not be calves for sale and cows may not then and there be wanted ; and there are Rings. I have known cases where at two markets separated by less than twenty miles the same class of stock has differed fifty per cent. Until lately even fat stock was not weighed. And having taken a cow to market, it is troublesome, costly, and some- times dangerous to bring it back. " A market is a trap," said once an astute farmer to me. That many agree with him is shown by the prevalence of the other method to which the bailiff resorts to make his contacts—resort to the dealer, the jobber. The stuff is sold on the farm to a dealer whose whole time is given to informing himself about prices, by a man whose attention and energies are necessarily given to producing the stuff, not buying and selling. Of course, the honest broker gets the best of it all the time. And often the pigs are sold when they should be kept just because the producer has no means of knowing (unless he spends all his time running about the country, which would ultimately put his small farm in the Bank- ruptcy Court) that a mile or two away is bean stubble which that producer, also from lack of relevant informa- tion, sells for a song to the dealer, not knowing of the needs of the farmer who wanted it. Again, the dealer, the man who concentrates on the information, scores and the farmer pays.
And, again, one thinks of Montaigne and his Register. Why not agricultural registers ? That is to say, regional clearing houses of information and exchange, so that the small farmer needing calves or store cattle can call up that clearing house and say : " I need six calves of such a type. What have you on your books ? " and get the reply, " Such and such a dairy notifies us it has such and such ; its telephone number is ." Or, " In our paddocks now are cattle of such and such description." A little imagination could fill in details about deposits, guarantees, ruling prices, &c.
Now, anyone who has wrestled with problems of ;JO' cultural co-operation and marketing will tell you why the attempts to do just that kind of thing have failed, and, will perhaps add, " are bound to fail." He will descant at length, perhaps, upon the farmer's peculiar psycholot*', his ingrained habits, his inertia, or what not.
And when you turn to the cities and their activities and ask why it is that here, too, the necessary contacts are still made in crudely haphazard fashion ; why certa'5 obvious efficiencies, which have in other countries already indeed been adopted, arc lacking ; why vast industries especially associated With modern life, like the manufac- ture of typewriters, cash registers, calculators, many machine tools, labour-saVing devices of the household, the development of modern plumbing, have simply passed to foreign hands, you get the same reply : " Na- tional psychology," " natural conservatism of the English," " won't haVe new tools or methods. . . ."
And the retort of these articles is that it is the business of advertising, among other things, to break down that conservatism and inertia ; that the organization of modern life calls all along the line for an activity which has two distinct aspects : one, the conveyance of information which, once giVen, suffices (like the information that B needs “roods which A has for sale), and the other aspect, that of persuasion, constant reminding, prompting, suggestion, indispensable when, having fallen into a rut, we have to make a new adaptation to changed circumstances. Without this prompting and iteration, the change in habit is not made. But the habit will be changed if the job of persuasion, something which demands a know- ledge of psychology, of human nature, of the art of putting a case, is made efficiently. As applied to com- merce, this is advertising. And it is because it has not been applied to the right quarter—say to the habits and prejudices of owners or office managers, or farmers, or housewives—in the right way, which in the circumstances here under consideration usually means by the collective and common effort of those industries which produce the devices, that schemes like co-operative markets and other farming enterprises, and the efforts to give English life better mechanical equipment, have in part failed. It is here suggested that advertising properly conceived can play a large part in overcoming certain inertias that at present stand in the way of British prosperity—in what way a further article will elucidate.
NORMAN ANCELL.
(Next. week Mr. Norman Angell describes his expe- riences in buying farm equipment for small farms he has owned in America and England, and compares the marketing methods of our manufacturers and those of the United States.—En. Spectator.]
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