{"id":1078,"date":"2011-03-02T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info-libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2023-07-10T19:43:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T19:43:31","slug":"1915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/2011\/03\/02\/1915\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 55 – 1915: The Business of Advertising by Earnest Elmo Calkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published: New York and London, 1915\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These days we recognize advertising as big business: thirty-second Superbowl spots sell for eye-popping amounts each year. And it\u2019s hard to deny that advertising is effective: just glimpsing the logo of a favorite junk food brand can create a hankering that\u2019s positively Pavlovian.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a science behind successful advertisements, which the author of today\u2019s book, Earnest Elmo Calkins (1868-1964), attempts to explain. As he states in the foreword, it is through \u201cscientific management, the painstaking collection of statistics and their intelligent arrangement, and the exercise of \u2026 common-sense\u201d that we reduce the \u201celement of uncertainty in the launching of an advertising campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Calkins, who with Ralph Holden formed Calkins and Holden, a leading American advertising firm in the early 20th century, was himself an advertising pioneer. Notably, he devised a theory of \u201cconsumer engineering\u201d stating that effective advertisements and designs could create an artificial demand for a product. Manufacturers could increase demand even further through planned obsolescence.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, our society has changed: once upon a time, we\u2019d buy a product to use it for as long as possible. Now we buy a product to use it for a period of time and then replace it with a new one, only to replace that one in turn, in a continuous cycle of consumerism.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Calkins was also an early proponent of the \u201csoft sell.\u201d Soft sell advertising, as its name suggests, is a less aggressive sales approach, intended to promote sales through indirect suggestion. The method requires that the advertiser pay close attention to the consumer\u2019s desires and needs, and build a relationship of trust between consumer and manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Calkins\u2019 firm made a practice of going door-to-door and speaking with housewives to improve the effectiveness of advertisements. He also condemned, in writing, what he considered the unsavory practices of other advertisers, including the use of fear, pseudoscientific jargon, and paid testimonials.<\/p>\n

If the advertisements that illustrate this book now strike us as kitschy and nostalgic, it\u2019s at least partly the result of today\u2019s ad campaigns, which are so much more sophisticated \u2026 having evolved from Calkins\u2019 own early ideas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published: New York and London, 1915 These days we recognize advertising as big business: thirty-second Superbowl spots sell for eye-popping amounts each year. And it\u2019s hard to deny that advertising is effective: just glimpsing the logo of a favorite junk food brand can create a hankering that\u2019s positively Pavlovian. There\u2019s a science behind successful advertisements, which the author of today\u2019s book, Earnest Elmo Calkins (1868-1964), attempts to explain. As he states in the foreword, it is through \u201cscientific management, the painstaking collection of statistics and their intelligent arrangement, and the exercise of \u2026 common-sense\u201d that we reduce the \u201celement of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4266,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions\/4266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}