He has been advertised for three centuries with praise originating from a thousand sources, and his reputation is now steeped head and ears in Cumulative Results.
Shakespeare's name has become a sort of trade-mark of good literature. If a meddling antiquarian should thoughtlessly add to the afflictions of the intellectual life by unearthing a doggerel sonnet of Thomas the Rhymer to which some clerkly scribe had affixed, in error, the name of William Shakespeare, learned men would read it, and nodding wisely, would doubtless say, "Pretty good stuff"—or the scholarly equivalent of that phrase.
The force of recognized distinction is tremendous, not only in literature, but in business, in science—in short, it is one of the most valuable assets in every field of human endeavor.
A commodity may attain a height of distinction, in the public's estimation, that places it, among other commodities of its class, on the level attained by Shakespeare in literature.
Apollinaris among table waters; Heinz "57" among pickles; Hartshorn rollers among window shade appliances; Coca-Cola among soda fountain drinks; Huyler's among candies; Uneeda Biscuit among soda crackers; Horlick's among malted milks—each of these products has become, by reason of advertising combined with intrinsic merit, the standard of quality in its own class.
It is interesting and easy to make practical tests to ascertain what advertised commodities have made a genuine and far-reaching impression on the buying public.
Take talcum powder, for example.
Ask your wife, daughter, sister, stenographer—and as many other women as are necessary to strike a general average—to write down the name of what each of them considers the standard talcum powder. Then, when all the returns are in, figure up the result. There are hundreds of brands of talcum powder sold in the United States; but you will find in your canvass that only three or four are mentioned at all, and that one of them leads all the rest by a decisive majority. We could tell you what the figures produced by your experiment would show the leading brand to be, but a modest reserve in self-assertion forbids us to say more than that its name begins with the letter M.
The enviable position of this particular talcum powder is the sum total of many years' advertising and trade-mark publicity. It has become a permanent feature of our commercial life; a sort of Bunker Hill in the history of advertising. The natural result is that its trade-mark is enormously valuable.
Advertising capitalizes human faith, and faith is a mental impression. It is a quality of the human mind that the most profound impressions are made by things—not by abstract ideas. Consequently, successful advertising must be tied hard and fast to a name (or trade-mark) and this trade-mark must be distinctive, and not easy to confuse with something else. It must be easy to remember, and it must identify the advertised product.