A LESSON IN ADVERTISING FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

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.

Craig Valine is the publisher of the The AwfulMarketing Alert
Newsletter, "Where you learn GOOD marketing strategies by
looking at those who do it really BAD."

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