Page:The Science of Advertising (1910).djvu/41

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
The Science of Advertising
37

ing people's habits, making them wish for new and better products and more of them; but they cannot—even the best advertisers—secure to themselves anywhere near all the benefit of their own advertising. Even the most successful advertising gives only a part of its returns to the one who pays for it. All the unadvertised similar articles benefit by and so reduce the success of the advertised ones.

How Non-Advertisers Share in the General Campaigns.

The advertisers in every line of goods, from enameled bathtubs to safety razors, are making extra efforts and taking all the risks incident to establishing their lines in popular favor, while the non-advertisers in similar lines, making no effort and risking nothing, are "scabbing it" upon them and enjoying the general benefit flowing from the agitation.

This is a vertebral principle of operation in publicity to be borne in mind in reviewing the statement made at the opening of the last article that the progress of this country waits very directly upon the establishment of uses by advertising.

The fact that advertising does so much more than sell advertised products is so thoroughly established that it forms one of the most serious and most discussed problems of the advertising business.