A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE ANCHOR
OF PRECEDENT
In a young country business enterprises are apt to suffer from the lack of the Anchor of Precedent. Where a business has been handed down from generation to generation tradition becomes a rock wall, ever guarding the inheriting owner against the overdevelopment of his own shrewdness, against too great eagerness for quick gains. In America business necessarily lacks this particular variety of inbred conservatism, but here we have found for it an effective substitute, a substitute that does not require a century or two for incubation. Its name is Advertising.
“Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” and if you are sufficiently persistent in the assumption, eventually you will find that you really have it. Particularly is this true of the virtues of business. No better substitute will ever be found for the prestige that comes from tradition and precedent than the prestige that a business builds for itself through Advertising. A two-edged weapon, Advertising is certain to convert its own employer, if he stands in need of conversion. It is ever a jealous guardian of his integrity.
No business can consistently and continuously tell the world of its laudable policies, its upright methods, its worthy goods, while resorting to fraud and malfeasance. Even if legitimate advertising channels were open to such uses—which they are not—the human sense of the unfitness of such a policy would check and cure it. Every consistent Advertiser eventually reaches the point where he is forced by his Advertising to live up to the higher standards he has created with his Advertising. This is one of the reasons why efficient Advertising in time becomes an implied warranty more binding than the best of gold bond guarantees.
Obviously, this process requires time. But it does not take generations.
In the field of Architecture, particularly, are these facts important. The untried and the unproven present hazards which the architect must judge as a trustee for his client. The fiduciary may not take the chances over which, as a principal, he might not hesitate. At the same time he can not reject every new thing because it has had but brief trial. And Advertising leads the way out of this dilemma, presenting assurances that nothing else but much time and long experience could furnish.
The consistently advertised product is manifestly the safe product. The product that is not advertised, whose maker is so lacking in confidence that he dares not tell his sales argument in public, has little to commend it, carries with it so little satisfaction-insurance that it seldom merits consideration.
Talks on Advertising—II
by
THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT
OF PRECEDENT
In a young country business enterprises are apt to suffer from the lack of the Anchor of Precedent. Where a business has been handed down from generation to generation tradition becomes a rock wall, ever guarding the inheriting owner against the overdevelopment of his own shrewdness, against too great eagerness for quick gains. In America business necessarily lacks this particular variety of inbred conservatism, but here we have found for it an effective substitute, a substitute that does not require a century or two for incubation. Its name is Advertising.
“Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” and if you are sufficiently persistent in the assumption, eventually you will find that you really have it. Particularly is this true of the virtues of business. No better substitute will ever be found for the prestige that comes from tradition and precedent than the prestige that a business builds for itself through Advertising. A two-edged weapon, Advertising is certain to convert its own employer, if he stands in need of conversion. It is ever a jealous guardian of his integrity.
No business can consistently and continuously tell the world of its laudable policies, its upright methods, its worthy goods, while resorting to fraud and malfeasance. Even if legitimate advertising channels were open to such uses—which they are not—the human sense of the unfitness of such a policy would check and cure it. Every consistent Advertiser eventually reaches the point where he is forced by his Advertising to live up to the higher standards he has created with his Advertising. This is one of the reasons why efficient Advertising in time becomes an implied warranty more binding than the best of gold bond guarantees.
Obviously, this process requires time. But it does not take generations.
In the field of Architecture, particularly, are these facts important. The untried and the unproven present hazards which the architect must judge as a trustee for his client. The fiduciary may not take the chances over which, as a principal, he might not hesitate. At the same time he can not reject every new thing because it has had but brief trial. And Advertising leads the way out of this dilemma, presenting assurances that nothing else but much time and long experience could furnish.
The consistently advertised product is manifestly the safe product. The product that is not advertised, whose maker is so lacking in confidence that he dares not tell his sales argument in public, has little to commend it, carries with it so little satisfaction-insurance that it seldom merits consideration.
Talks on Advertising—II
by
THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT