Heart-to-Heart Advertising
I am all things to all advertisers. I like to submit myself to the experiments of some alert young psychologist, in response to whose plan (scientifically conceived, artfully presented), I greatly desire to eat, to see, to hear, to know, to do, to possess, that which he brings to my attention. Being a person trained to jejune classification, I automatically pigeon-hole the “appeal,” and my mind therefore offers to advertisements a hospitable retreat under Ambition, or Culture, or Physical development, or the Senses, or Vanity.
The last quality and the first are not always distinguishable, the one from the other. When a page of insinuating text and startling illustration assures me that the reading of a specified set of books will enable me,—a person temperamentally shy and physically inconspicuous—to convince judges and jurors, and to combine into a glorious whole the abilities of St. Chrysostom, Abelard, Shylock, Daniel Webster, and a Confederate veteran, I am disposed to feel that though hitherto I have been unappreciated, it now rests with me (and the set of books) to alter, even to change, the opinion of my personal public. I glow, too, under the conviction that correspondence courses can transform me into a trained nurse, an O. Henry, a Thomas Nast. My vanity makes the conventional years of hospital service, or a “born” ability to tell a story, or to caricature, seem superfluous in an equipment for success. And I am sure I could raise wheat and apples in the north and oranges and pecans in the south, even though I should bring to my enterprise no capital, no experience, no commonsense.
But while I yield readily and sympathetically to the magazine advertisement, my heartiest response is given to the letter that altruistically offers me counsels of perfection. There is a certain lack of privacy about the magazine advertisement; but the letter advertisement is confidential, even sometimes secretive. True, my name is frequently misspelled, my sex is changed, and the ink and type are glaringly different in the heading and in the letter proper. But these are trifling vagaries: it is my own letter, and the writer knows me intimately. He says this plainly. And he proves it by offering me the book, or the beautifier, or the investment which I had not even known I wanted, but which I do want instantly, and with an intensity that falls short only of cutting from the lower corner of the page the slanting coupon that will procure me farther information.
It is this intimacy of attitude on the part of the writers of form-letters that gives me keenest pleasure. I like the way in which a kindly, tolerant young person—youth will always out—assures me that my manner of life and my personal predilections are as an open book to him. I like the first-aid flavor of his opening paragraph. I like most of all the jaunty soul-brother way in which he dallies with his point.
“The writer of this letter has been pondering a good deal”, begins one of these experts in the personal appeal, “on the sort of letter he would like to get from So-and-So.” And at the conclusion of his clever page, he inquires ingenuously (or artistically): “Is this the sort of letter you like to get from So-and-So?” Bless the boy! of course it is.
And I do enjoy the letter that is designed to make me leap from my seat with the first line: “Tomorrow may be too late!” or, “This idea was worth $100 to one person—it may prove even more valuable to you;” or, “Shakespeare died in 1616!”
Again, the subject may be approached obliquely: “You have read of course, the interesting story in the Sunday Morning Sunshine, entitled “Sparkles.” You’ll remember how Dorothy—” And about the middle of page two I find that the reason why the heroine was a heroine was because she had a piece of furniture, the duplicate of which I am granted an opportunity to purchase, if I act quickly, at greatly reduced rates.
But although the letter-writing section of psychological advertisers gives me keen pleasure, they also give me some anxiety. It seems to me that they waste a good deal of good effort. The reason for this failure to conserve, lies, I think, in the lack of an ingredient that would fuse all of this experimental psychology and engaging personality into a practical working whole. And by “working” I mean money getting: for of course advertisers have their reason for being, in the persuading of somebody to buy something, or to subscribe to something. The ingredient which I miss is businesslike accuracy. Of course I realize that these are merely form-letters, that the mailing list is compiled from any available source. But the advertisers wish each person who receives a letter to feel that it was written for him or her personally, and they take a great deal of trouble to perfect the atmosphere. It is not artistic, or professional, therefore, to destroy the illusion by the address or the opening sentence. It was a disgusted gentleman who received a letter which began thus:
“Dr. John Doe
Professor of Latin
University of UtopiaDear Sir:
A friend of yours—she prefers that we should not use her name—tells us that you are the best dressed woman in your city. Our new line of evening frocks….”
And women often receive letters such as the following:
“Miss Margaret Roe, etc., etc.
Dear Madam:
As a man who knows a good pipe from a bad one, will you grant us an opportunity to show you….”
Undoubtedly these charming highly imaginative specialists in advertising give great pleasure. But when business houses month after month send advertising letters which set forth the glories of something glaringly impossible of enjoyment by the person to whom the letter is addressed, then that person is likely to reflect that squandered postage, and inefficient management, must be paid for in the price or quality of the thing advertised.
The literary value of a personal form-letter is not affected, however, by the question of practical usefulness. Nothing could lessen my pleasure in a recent letter that shows me how I may realize the “chummy comradeship of Emerson’s nature poems,” and the “dainty art of Shelley and Keats.” The writer also tells me that he knows what my principal problem is. And the opening sentence of the same letter seems to explain why I enjoy all advertisements:
“To that ‘marvellous interestingness of life’ which Arnold Bennett says literature reflects, is due the fundamental liking for good reading of some kind….”