The Day of the Advertisement: In Which Is Explained the Genesis of the Harvard Awards, by Their Creator

THE war proved a great friend of the advertisement. We were already, previous to 1914, the greatest nation of advertisers in the world. Mr. Gladstone had registered his opinion that he studied the economic development of the United States through advertisements. Rudyard Kipling had expressed his annoyance with an American friend who sent him the American magazines with the advertisements omitted, to save postage. But the war distinctly accelerated the pace, and widened the scope. Merchants and business men who had viewed advertising much as a man might regard a medicine, to be taken only as a necessary evil and gingerly at that, began to see the full-page newspaper advertisement, hitherto confined to department stores offering scores of articles, utilized for a single article until it became a familiar unit. The United States Government became a large and active advertiser for human beings to fill up the ranks of its army and navy. Conservative bankers and financiers, who had hitherto recognized advertising as a medium effective perhaps for selling a cake of soap but not for the sale of a bond, saw issues of Liberty Bonds, totaling unheard-of amounts, sold through the advertisement. Publicity became an overworked word.

The volume of advertising increased to such an extent that even the newspapers groaned under the weight, realized that too much of anything, no matter how good, is too much, and began to hang out signs regretting the fact that ‘ thirty-two columns of advertisements had to be omitted from today’s issue of the —.’ The magazines began to stagger under the weight of a greater number of pages devoted to advertisements than to reading matter. But still the great public read the everincreasing amount of advertisements, and the publisher was, of course, only too glad ' to accommodate.’ Then came the after-the-war economic reaction, and matters automatically adjusted themselves. Millions of dollars’ worth of advertising disappeared over night. But only for a brief period. Now, with returning prosperity, the volume is again not only large, but increasing, until we face the astounding fact that over one billion dollars is spent on advertising in one year, divided, according to the plausible figures of an advertising expert, about as follows:—

The day of the advertisement is certainly here.

It stands to reason that of such a huge expenditure of money a goodly percentage will be misapplied and wasted by the advertiser, and that the ever-increasing proportion of advertising to reading matter will begin to be resented by the reader. To-day the first distinct, audible mutterings of resentment are being heard on the part of the readers of the Sunday newspaper, who feel that they are paying for an advertising catalogue instead of a newspaper. And expressed resentment on the part of the American public is never far from pronounced revolution. The advertiser is beginning to feel, too, that what was once considered a large advertisement, which he could depend upon to attract instant attention, is now ‘buried’ in the huge bundles of meaningless supplements which are sold as newspapers fifty-two times during a year. It was only natural that a medium so alluring as the advertisement, that could mean an increase of revenue and profit both to the merchant who used it and to the publisher who issued it, should quickly reach the saturation point. And there is where the advertisement in the United States finds itself to-day. It may not be true that advertising has reached its limit, any more than it is true that the surface of advertising has not yet been scratched.

One statement is true, however: that quantity has superseded quality.

I have been removed for four years from a close association with advertising, and have been intensely interested in sitting on the side lines, so to speak, and watching the procession of advertisements day by day and year by year. I have, of course, thus secured a perspective which close association makes difficult, if not impossible. And I speak with a due regard for conservatism when I declare that I know of no line of economic endeavor, unless it is the distribution and selling of books, in which, considering the vast amount of money involved, so little originality and advancement of standards has been shown as in what we call ‘the science of advertising.’ It may be that the rapid increase of volume has been a deterrent to careful thought and to the creative faculty. Here and there one sees a glimmer of greater care: of a realization of the potentiality of the advertisement; of a desire, at least, to lift the standard either of the construction of the message or of its presentation. But, taking it by and large, considering the encouragement which the public has so generously indicated to the advertiser, it is pathetic to see the barrenness of initiative and originality in the modern advertisement. It is not that the desire does not exist, or that the attempt is not made. Experts in advertising there are to-day: departments in advertising agencies and in publishing houses exist, devoted singly and solely to the development of the advertisement. But the fact remains that results in ideas commensurate with the growth of the business are not visible.

We speak nowadays of ‘the science of advertising’: we say that the writing of an advertisement has become an art; that to compose a successful advertising booklet is just as serious an undertaking as, and calls for an ability equal to, the writing of a reading book. We say this, but do we actually believe it? Has the public given any concrete indication of its acceptance of such a standard for advertising writing? Is it not to-day still regarded as a trade rather than accepted as a science or an art? What encouragement Iras been given the writer of the advertisement to make him realize the responsibility of his craft, the potentiality of his work? Have we really ever said to him: ‘Your work is perhaps more ephemeral, more of to-day, than is that of the writer of a song or a book, who writes for to-day and for the morrow. Yet your work has become so potential a force that it has become an art of itself, carrying a stewardship and responsibility that should be encouraged, so that its standards may be raised ‘ ?

Is there not a distinct place in the American life of to-day for the man who regards honesty of statement as the prime essential of the most effective advertisement; who believes that the message of commerce may be written in a language that conforms with its best uses; who puts often the best that a careful education has given him into a pleading for patronage? The human heart is, after all, the same, whether it belongs to the man who writes an epic or to him who writes an advertisement. Both are striving for the same end: to get their message across to those who read. Because an advertisement is more commercial than the lyric, is there any reason why we should place less emphasis upon its construction? We ask of a poem, a novel, a play, or a newspaper editorial that it shall have certain structural qualities, and by these standards we measure them. Why not the advertisement, now that it is taking such a place in American economics? In other words, why not take the advertisement more seriously, regard it from a new angle, and insist that it shall reach a certain standard? If we do this, as in fact we are already beginning unconsciously to do, then how about the creator of the advertisement? The world rewards the man who writes a poem or a book, or who paints a picture, in other ways than with the financial return which it brings to him. The beginning and end of life are, after all, not the material. The recognition of our fellow men is very sweet to our senses. Nothing is more honestly stimulating to higher endeavor; no reward is quite so deeply satisfying.

If the university maysay,‘Well done,’ to the writer of the editorial, the book, the poem, the play, would it not do much for the encouragement of another side of literature if the same encomium were given to the writer of the advertisement?

It was this note that was struck last spring by the editor of Collier ‘s Weekly, Mr. Richard J. Walsh, himself an expert writer of advertisements, in an editorial wdiich came to my attention. The 1922 awards in the series of Pulitzer Prizes had just been announced by the trustees of Columbia University, and the editorial aptly asked: ‘Here are awards for the best play, the best biography, the best newspaper editorial, the best novel, the best book of poems, and so on. Why has not the time come for someone to encourage better advertisement-writing by offering an award for the best advertisement during a year?’

The more I thought of the argument of the Collier’s editor, the more the truth came home to me that his question was well put. What public encouragement or recognition had, after all, ever been given the advertisement writer? We have all been saying for years that the standard of advertising should be raised, but who had conceived any concrete method of public recognition when the effort was made and a result achieved? After all, certain results had been achieved, some of a high order of excellence.

There was the idea. The rest was simple. It was perfectly natural that, as it was fitting for Columbia University, with its School for Journalism, to offer awards for journalistic and literary endeavor, the mind should turn to Harvard University, with its School of Business Administration, and its course therein devoted to advertising, to offer awards for the encouragement of a better quality of advertisementwriting and presentation.

Hence, the Harvard Awards which will, simultaneously with the publication of this article, be announced by the President of Harvard University.

The general hope contained in the Awards is: —

First: That they may act as a deservèd individual encouragement to those in whose hands the writing of advertisements is entrusted, and create in their minds the thought that there exists a tribunal which is henceforth to be watchful of conscientious effort in their line of endeavor and place thereon the seal of public approval;

To foster the usage of correctly expressed English;

To encourage the art of effective expression in few words;

To attain a higher standard of art;

To achieve a truer realization and acceptance of typography as an art.

Second: That there shall exist behind the advertisement a previously conceived intelligent and comprehensive plan of production and distribution. It is in the failure to realize this necessity that we so often see a prodigious amount of money wasted in advertising.

Hence the Awards aim to encourage on the part of the advertiser: —

The necessity, by careful research, of a correct understanding of the possibilities of the market to which he seeks to appeal before he launches his advertising campaign;

A recognition of the necessity that proper production facilities and distribution methods must precede and not follow expenditure for advertising.

In other words, the recognition of the fact that the day of haphazard advertising is over; that the advertisement must, in its structural quality, be regarded as a unit of effective art, and that thought in planning and execution must be an integral part of an advertising campaign. It is as a helpful factor in these aspects of the field of advertising that the Harvard Awards are, to the extent of their influence, created, and placed under auspices which ensure for them fairness of judgment and dignity of award.