Advertising Was Once Just a Gamble, But Not Anymore… (Part 1)

Advertising was once just a gamble, but times have changed. 

Now, in some hands, advertising can effectively be considered a science. It is based on fixed principles, and its causes and effects have been carefully analyzed and well understood. 

It has thus become, under able direction, one of the safest business ventures. We know what is most effective and can act according to those basic laws. The lack of those fundamentals has been the main problem with advertising in the past. 

It was like when Columbus started to find an undiscovered land. Men were guided by whims and changing breezes, they rarely arrived at their port. Advertising was then a speculation of the rashest sort. 

One man’s guess on the proper course was as likely to be as good as another’s. There were no safe pilots because only a few sailed the same course twice. 

Decades later that condition has been now corrected. Advertising has flourished under these new laws. It has multiplied in volume, prestige and respect. The results have increased many folds. 

The perils have almost been eliminated. Ironically, when losses do occur, they have nothing to do with advertising. It’s like a supercar with the best engine, tires, and weather conditions— all set for a race, without realising that all those things don’t matter if the person behind the wheel doesn’t know how to drive properly.

Now the only uncertainties pertain to people and products, not to methods. These facts are to be recognised by all who seek to venture…

“Individuality is an essential. Imitation is a reproach.“

Those elements that depend on ingenuity have no place in advertising.  

Though this ”gamble” has become a science, the blind leading the blind is still ridiculous. 

It is pitiful that in a field with such vast possibilities success is still a rarity, maximum success an impossibility unless one is guided by these laws.

That said, thousands of successes show its possibilities and its almost unlimited scope. Yet thousands who need it and those who can never reach their potential without it still consider its accomplishments somewhat accidental. 

That may have been the case in the past, but it is not so now. 

Talk soon,