Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III ADVERTISING STRATEGY Far more important than the actual writing of the advertisement, is the planning that is done before the advertisement is written. Given a choice between a good plan with a poor advertisement, or a good advertisement with a poor plan, take the former. Single pieces of advertising are rarely successful. It is the prolonged, systematized, carefully . planned campaign of advertising that gets the . business, and such a campaign cannot possibly be prepared without careful study. The advertising man must be a general, if he has the brain to direct the selling, and this he fi. should have in order to write the kind of copy that builds a business. Market conditions at home and abroad, distribution, and merchandise all require the most detailed consideration. You cannot separate the merchandise and the advertisement. The advertisement that tells nothing, sells nothing; therefore, you must know your merchandise. You must know it as '. well as the man who makes it — and add to ita poetry of imagination, which the other may not possess. If the merchandise does hot back up the advertisement, the advertisement will be a failure. Further than this, it will financially kill the man who advertises. It behooves the advertising writer to deal in plain facts with his clients — to tell them the truth about what is wrong with the merchandise, or the service, or distribution — if there is something wrong — before the advertising is written. This means, of course, that a good advertising man is a good merchandiser. Taking advantage of market conditions is another feather in the advertiser's cap. There are psychological waves that sweep over the country from time to time, and the advertiser, like the politician, must take full advantage o...