The Harvester World: Volume 3, number 4, April 1912

              Advertising-A Producing Part of the Sales Force
By M. R. D. Owings, Advertising Manager

Modern business is based wholly on good will. It can live as long without good will as a fish can live out of water. There is so much business, so much competition, such facilities for getting everything,  that    the   slightest
ignorance   or   the   most whimsical prejudice   may turn away many customers and  their   dollars and M. RiD. OwiNGs cents.    This  fundamental
truth makes advertising not only possible but very vital. Unfortunately the exact productiveness of advertising cannot be measured in dollars and inches. But to say that it is non-productive would be folly. It would be flying in the face of the experience of all successful business concerns. All progressive houses and companies advertise. The most progressive of them advertise the most. The most successful advertise not only widely but wisely. They have learned the great power of education, suggestion, and art. In other words they have learned the incalculable value of good will.
Now-a-days there is nothing quite so vitaliz¬ ing to any institution or corporation as the personal, the human, touch. The advertising department is or should be the personal side of every corporation. It is there that those subtle   forces   are    generated   which    create
good will. In the form of courtesy, personal interest, mutual help, and eagerness to supply just what is wanted, these forces go out over the country and work without ceasing night and day. The results that they bring are con¬ stant and cumulative. If people know just what you have, if you have convinced them that it is good and if they are personally friendly they will buy from you. Judicious advertising makes every customer an agent. But even where agents do not go, advertising goes noiselessly and effectively. The months when the weather prevents traveling, when activity is slack with the salesman, advertising goes to prepare the way. In the quiet of these indoor months, it shapes habits of thought. The action born of these thoughts will natur¬ ally follow the trails blazed by advertising. Where will these trails lead?
Money spent in advertising is bread cast upon the waters. It often may seem like the voice in a wilderness but in the distance of time its echoes are redoubled and become far- reaching.
No one ever questions the value of good music. Although its effects cannot be measured we know that it elevates and refines through the emotions. Advertising is the emotional side of business. It not only makes business more successful but it lifts it out of the ordinary into the unusual, out of the common-place into the interesting, extraordinary and attractive.
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