Advertising to Be Successful Must Sell the Specific Article Advertised.
For when advertisers spend millions to change people's habits, raise their standards and create in them a sentiment for new and better things, the only part of that advertising which pays the advertiser is the part which makes the people adopt the brand or make of the article specifically advertised, not a copy or an imitation of it.
Some of the best and most effective advertising to introduce new products in many lines has failed not because it didn't introduce the new product but because it did not sell enough of the advertiser's particular brand of the article to pay. It is one of the heroic, inspiring things seen in the advertising world when a pioneer advertiser goes ahead, risking everything on some new thing to be introduced, hoping only for a paying return and that not too much will be stolen from him.
But as we are not now considering advertising as affecting the advertiser but in its effect upon the nation, the important thing is the raising of the popular standards, economic and social. Starting with soap, I could have illustrated as well with automobiles.
With soap advertising the adoption of a higher standard of cleanliness has involved an additional effort upon the part of many thousands of people and advertising has brought it about. With auto-
