A LESSON IN ADVERTISING FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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 by: Patrick Quinn

Back in the 1760s, the great Dr Samuel Johnson delivered
himself of the dictum that ‘promise, large promise is the soul of
advertising’. It’s a good thought, a great thought; and I contend that
what was true then is equally true today. But it seems to me that
modern advertisers are tying themselves into unnecessary knots in an
attempt to reach audiences which they believe are becoming increasingly
indifferent to their blandishments.

Well, yes, markets are turning deaf ears and blind eyes,
but they always have done, though not for the reasons generally
espoused by the world’s marketers. I am convinced that despite all the
sophisticated research and marketing effort that goes into advertising
these days, the real reason that markets are indifferent to advertising
is because much of it ignores the many splendoured principle that
people don’t buy products, they buy the benefits of owning those
products.

Today, the great proportion of advertisers don’t deliver
sales messages, they tell what they hope are emotive stories with which
the market can empathise, then they drop the product in as an
afterthought, hoping that enough emotional cross-communication has been
achieved for people to reach for their credit cards. That it doesn’t
and people won’t has resulted in huge advertising budget cut-backs in
the developed world in recent years. Only a manufacturer who has taken
leave of his senses will throw even more money at a strategy that
doesn’t work.

The strategy responsible operates under the title
Emotional Sales Proposition (ESP), thought in some quarters to be an
advance on the Unique Sales Proposition (USP) which, on the contrary,
does actually work. What has been overlooked or, more likely, ignored,
is that in developing the principle of the USP in the late 1950s, the
brilliant Rosser Reeves was striving to replace an advertising strategy
that had been in situ for 30 or so years and was fast running out of
steam. What was the device he was hoping to supersede? Well, by any
other name, it was the emotional sales proposition. I won’t bore you
with the detail, but if you’d like to find out more, you should lay
your hands on Reeves’ book, Reality in Advertising (MacGibbon & Kee
– 1961). It could be an eye-opener.

So, it’s true – the one thing we learn from history is
that we never learn anything from history. Let’s go back to Dr Johnson.
It’s worth remembering that the kind of advertising old Sam was talking
about in the 18th century was fairly innocuous and largely
unexceptionable. It could be read in coffee- house flyers, in chapbooks
and in rudimentary newspapers; and it consisted of sales messages as
diverse as where to get your wig powdered and the date of the next
public hanging at Tyburn. Even so, the products and services on offer
were as important to the people of the time as mobile phones and
computers are to us.

In the human condition, nothing much changes. Our egos
still need to be massaged and we are all in hot pursuit of happiness.
Only our methods for achieving these goals, only our technologies, vary
with time.

So the next time you are tempted to commit advertising,
think about Sam Johnson and give your market a reason for owning your
product. A good reason.

About the Author

Patrick Quinn is an award winning copywriter with 40 years' experience of the advertising business in London, Miami, Dublin and Edinburgh. He publishes a FREE monthly newsletter, AdBriefing. Subscriptions are available at: http://www.adbriefing.com

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