I sin klas­siske bok “The art of money get­ting”, skriver sirkusle­gen­den P.T. Bar­num om vik­tigheten av å annon­sere for seg selv og sitt produkt.

Nå er ikke nød­vendigvis man­nen, som døde for godt over 100 år siden, den største eksperten på mod­erne markeds­føring, men det er likevel (eller kan­skje net­topp der­for) inter­es­sant  lesning. Og, etter­som han ble ver­dens første showbiz-millionær, så vis­ste han utvil­somt hva han gjorde i for­ret­nin­gene sine. Les hva han skriver etter lenkehoppet.

ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS
We all depend, more or less, upon the pub­lic for our sup­port. We all trade with the public–lawyers, doc­tors, shoe­mak­ers, artists, black­smiths, show­men, opera stagers, rail­road pres­i­dents, and col­lege pro­fes­sors. Those who deal with the pub­lic must be care­ful that their goods are valu­able; that they are gen­uine, and will give sat­is­fac­tion. When you get an arti­cle which you know is going to please your cus­tomers, and that when they have tried it, they will feel they have got their money’s worth, then let the fact be known that you have got it. Be care­ful to adver­tise it in some shape or other because it is evi­dent that if a man has ever so good an arti­cle for sale, and nobody knows it, it will bring him no return.

In a coun­try like this, where nearly every­body reads, and where news­pa­pers are issued and cir­cu­lated in edi­tions of five thou­sand to two hun­dred thou­sand, it would be very unwise if this chan­nel was not taken advan­tage of to reach the pub­lic in advertising.

A news­pa­per goes into the fam­ily, and is read by wife and chil­dren, as well as the head of the home; hence hun­dreds and thou­sands of peo­ple may read your adver­tise­ment, while you are attend­ing to your rou­tine busi­ness. Many, per­haps, read it while you are asleep. The whole phi­los­o­phy of life is, first “sow,” then “reap.” That is the way the farmer does; he plants his pota­toes and corn, and sows his grain, and then goes about some­thing else, and the time comes when he reaps. But he never reaps first and sows afterwards.

This prin­ci­ple applies to all kinds of busi­ness, and to noth­ing more emi­nently than to adver­tis­ing. If a man has a gen­uine arti­cle, there is no way in which he can reap more advan­ta­geously than by “sow­ing” to the pub­lic in this way. He must, of course, have a really good arti­cle, and one which will please his cus­tomers; any­thing spu­ri­ous will not suc­ceed per­ma­nently because the pub­lic is wiser than many imagine.

Men and women are self­ish, and we all pre­fer pur­chas­ing where we can get the most for our money and we try to find out where we can most surely do so.

You may adver­tise a spu­ri­ous arti­cle, and induce many peo­ple to call and buy it once, but they will denounce you as an impos­tor and swindler, and your busi­ness will grad­u­ally die out and leave you poor. This is right. Few peo­ple can safely depend upon chance cus­tom. You all need to have your cus­tomers return and pur­chase again. A man said to me, “I have tried adver­tis­ing and did not suc­ceed; yet I have a good article.”

I replied, “My friend, there may be excep­tions to a gen­eral rule. But how do you advertise?”

“I put it in a weekly news­pa­per three times, and paid a dol­lar and a half for it.” I replied: “Sir, adver­tis­ing is like learning–‘a lit­tle is a dan­ger­ous thing!’”

A French writer says that “The reader of a news­pa­per does not see the first men­tion of an ordi­nary adver­tise­ment; the sec­ond inser­tion he sees, but does not read; the third inser­tion he reads; the fourth inser­tion, he looks at the price; the fifth inser­tion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth inser­tion, he is ready to pur­chase, and the sev­enth inser­tion, he purchases.”

Your object in adver­tis­ing is to make the pub­lic under­stand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep adver­tis­ing, until you have imparted that infor­ma­tion, all the money you have spent is lost. You are like the fel­low who told the gen­tle­man if he would give him ten cents it would save him a dol­lar. “How can I help you so much with so small a sum?” asked the gen­tle­man in sur­prise. “I started out this morn­ing (hic­cuped the fel­low) with the full deter­mi­na­tion to get drunk, and I have spent my only dol­lar to accom­plish the object, and it has not quite done it.

Ten cents worth more of whiskey would just do it, and in this man­ner I should save the dol­lar already expended.”

So a man who adver­tises at all must keep it up until the pub­lic know who and what he is, and what his busi­ness is, or else the money invested in adver­tis­ing is lost.

Some men have a pecu­liar genius for writ­ing a strik­ing adver­tise­ment, one that will arrest the atten­tion of the reader at first sight. This fact, of course, gives the adver­tiser a great advan­tage. Some­times a man makes him­self pop­u­lar by an unique sign or a curi­ous dis­play in his win­dow, recently I observed a swing sign extend­ing over the side­walk in front of a store, on which was the inscrip­tion in plain letters,

“DON’T READ THE OTHER SIDE”

Of course I did, and so did every­body else, and I learned that the man had made all inde­pen­dence by first attract­ing the pub­lic to his busi­ness in that way and then using his cus­tomers well afterwards.

Genin, the hat­ter, bought the first Jenny Lind ticket at auc­tion for two hun­dred and twenty-five dol­lars, because he knew it would be a good adver­tise­ment for him. “Who is the bid­der?” said the auc­tion­eer, as he knocked down that ticket at Cas­tle Gar­den. “Genin, the hat­ter,” was the response. Here were thou­sands of peo­ple from the Fifth avenue, and from dis­tant cities in the high­est sta­tions in life. “Who is ‘Genin,’ the hat­ter?” they exclaimed. They had never heard of him before.

The next morn­ing the news­pa­pers and tele­graph had cir­cu­lated the facts from Maine to Texas, and from five to ten mil­lions off peo­ple had read that the tick­ets sold at auc­tion For Jenny Lind’s first con­cert amounted to about twenty thou­sand dol­lars, and that a sin­gle ticket was sold at two hun­dred and twenty-five dol­lars, to “Genin, the hat­ter.” Men through­out the coun­try invol­un­tar­ily took off their hats to see if they had a “Genin” hat on their heads.

At a town in Iowa it was found that in the crowd around the post office, there was one man who had a “Genin” hat, and he showed it in tri­umph, although it was worn out and not worth two cents. “Why,” one man exclaimed, “you have a real ‘Genin’ hat; what a lucky fel­low you are.” Another man said, “Hang on to that hat, it will be a valu­able heir-loom in your fam­ily.” Still another man in the crowd who seemed to envy the pos­ses­sor of this good for­tune, said, “Come, give us all a chance; put it up at auc­tion!” He did so, and it was sold as a keep­sake for nine dol­lars and fifty cents!

What was the con­se­quence to Mr. Genin? He sold ten thou­sand extra hats per annum, the first six years. Nine-tenths of the pur­chasers bought of him, prob­a­bly, out of curios­ity, and many of them, find­ing that he gave them an equiv­a­lent for their money, became his reg­u­lar cus­tomers. This novel adver­tise­ment first struck their atten­tion, and then, as he made a good arti­cle, they came again.

Now I don’t say that every­body should adver­tise as Mr. Genin did. But I say if a man has got goods for sale, and he don’t adver­tise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sher­iff will do it for him. Nor do I say that every­body must adver­tise in a news­pa­per, or indeed use “print­ers’ ink” at all. On the con­trary, although that arti­cle is indis­pens­able in the major­ity of cases, yet doc­tors and cler­gy­men, and some­times lawyers and some oth­ers, can more effec­tu­ally reach the pub­lic in some other man­ner. But it is obvi­ous, they must be known in some way, else how could they be supported?