MacGregor's book of bank advertising

Introduction

In revising and combining the material in several of my previous books on bank advertising to form the basis of this new and larger volume, I have endeavored to preserve all of the most worthwhile ic'-as while discarding others which the passage of time and changed conditions have rendered of less present value. In addition, a good deal of new material has been included from articles written by the author for "The Bankers Magazine" and "The Burroughs Clearing House."

While it is to be hoped that wartime conditions will never again prevail in this country, nevertheless it seems desirable to include in the pages of this book reproductions of a few bank advertisements of the war period. The war was a stimulus to bank advertising. The banks and trust companies co-operated very efficiently with the Government in financing our share in it. The Liberty Loan and War Savings campaigns opened the eyes of many bankers to the possibilities of advertising. Therefore, a brief consideration of that advertising in retrospect cannot help but prove of interest and value to those who have to do with the publicity of their institutions.

Advertising, once looked upon by some business men as an expense, is now quite generally regarded in its proper light — as an investment.

The primary purpose of most advertising is to increase business.

Some advertising is done with other objects in view, but in most cases now-a-days every dollar spent in advertising is expected to come back, sooner or later, bringing many others with it.

Advertising is by no means a fixed science. There are no set rules the observance of which will insure success to the advertiser.

But experience is a good teacher, and it need not all be your own experience. In the past few years there has been a wonderful advance in advertising knowledge, and progress has been made in the facilities for the preparation and distribution of advertising matter to such an extent that advertising means much more than it did even a decade ago.

The fundamental principles involved in financial advertising do not differ from those of advertising in general. However, there are some things in financial publicity that require special emphasis. Hence this book.

All advertising should be confidence inspiring, but, more than any iv INTRODUCTION

other class of advertising, that of financial or investment institutions must have this quality.

When a man turns over his money to the care of another and in return gets for the time being nothing more tangible than a promise to return it with interest at some future time, he needs the strongest kind of assurance concerning the integrity and business ability of the men who make such a proposition to him.

A good deal has been said about the necessity for dignity in financial advertising. It is right, there should be dignity, and the chief reason is because that helps to inspire confidence.

At the same time the advertising must not be so dignified that it lacks in human interest, persuasiveness and the power of conviction. In short, the problem is how to combine the right amount of dignity with the requisite ' ' pulling power. ' '

The value of advertising is not to be measured only by the direct returns from advertisements.

Honest, continuous advertising and making good on promises helps to create for advertisers good will — an asset of intangible but very real value.

There are many other things that go to create and maintain prestige or good will for a business, but the right kind of advertising is the principal means to that end.

While it cannot be measured by the yard stick nor expressed in dollars and cents, good will has an acknowledged value. A recent court decision placed a valuation of $1,000,000 upon the trademark of a certain very large advertiser. A considerable expenditure for general advertising, continued over a period of years, gave that trademark its great value.

It will work just the same in your business if you are a persistent advertiser and everybody connected with your institution uses his best efforts to carry out the promises of courteous and considerate treatment made in the advertising. All employes must have a proper conception of the importance of each customer's good will and a sincere desire to gain it.

There is such a thing as the cumulative effect of continuous advertising. The first time a person reads your advertisement he may not be in a position to act favorably upon the suggestion you make. In fact, he may not be ready for months, but if you have kept your name before the public and used your advertising space to good advantage by filling it with interesting, informing, convincing copy, frequently changed, you have held that man's attention and when he is prepared to do as you suggest you are very likely to get his business.

There is a secondary advertising of much value that comes to the

INTRODUCTION v

regular and steady advertiser. It arises from the daily talk of the community when the name of your institution or company has become a household word through persistent publicity. When you have reached a point where the people take up your advertising and voluntarily help to make your business better known, you are fortunate indeed.

There are different ways of arriving at how much a bank should spend for advertising. It is difficult to lay down any hard and fast rule, as conditions alter cases to such an extent. Various arbitrary formulas have been devised to determine the size of the advertising budget or appropriation. One of them is, one-tenth of one per cent, of the deposits for advertising expenditures annually. That seems like a good average for an old established institution. In any case, a definite plan of advertising ought to be adopted in order to justify the expenditure.

In making up a bank's advertising budget or appropriation, it should be remembered that this is an aggregate of what is required for the advertising of the various departments, and that the needs of each department should be carefully studied before assigning to it its proportion of the total advertising appropriation.

The purpose of the compilation of paragraphs for advertising ' ' copy ' ' at the ends of several of the chapters in this book is to provide a handy compendium of ideas and phrases suitable for use in the preparation of financial advertising matter — whether newspaper or magazine advertisements, booklets, circulars or "form" letters.

The points brought out in these paragraphs are largely such as have been used by the author in his long experience as a planner, writer and supervisor of financial advertising.

It is scarcely necessary to explain how this material can be used, as that will readily suggest itself to the reader who had any occasion whatever to use the printed or typewritten page as a means of soliciting business.

One way that may not occur to the reader without suggestion, however, is to use the volume as a "paragraph book" in dictating Jetters in the regular course of business. For this purpose, it will save time and secure more effective letters than might otherwise be the case.

While it is generally conceded that the newspaper is the best advertising medium for banks and trust companies, there are quite a number of institutions which, for one reason or another, do not use the advertising columns of the newspapers regularly. In some cases, there is no suitable publication in the territory served by the bank. In others, the advertising rates seem to be prohibitive as the advertiser is forced to pay for a lot of circulation of no benefit to the institution bevi INTRODUCTION

cause many of the readers are not located where they can conveniently deposit at that particular bank.

And then there are banks that do advertise in newspapers, but feel the need also of other forms of publicity to supplement the valuable advertising in the daily and weekly press.

So it comes about that there is quite a field for bank advertising ideas, plans and schemes entirely separate from newspaper publicity, or only partly dependent upon it. In this book are presented some of the best of such plans and ideas as they have been and are being used by various kinds of financial institutions in different sections of the country. This part of the book is really a composite of the plans and successful efforts of a great many keen bankers and bank advertising men, and it should be correspondingly helpful.

T. D. MacGregor.

Edwin Bird Wilson, Inc., New York City, March 15, 1921.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction iii

I Copy and Typography 1

Chapter I

YOUR ADVERTISING space costs you a certain amount of money. You pay just the same for it whether it is seen and read by all the readers of the paper or by only part of them. Your object then should be to endeavor to get as nearly 100 per cent, circulation for your advertisement as possible. Is it not reasonable to say that an advertisement read by 80 per cent, of the possible readers is worth twice as much as one read by only 40 per cent.? The answer is good copy. If you can't produce it yourself get somebody to help you who knows how to handle type, illustration and language to get the best possible results from these tools. The additional cost will be taken care of by the increased results from the advertising.

Therefore, a study of "copy" and the actual preparation of advertising matter naturally precedes the consideration of the broader subject of methods and the complete compaign.

So we begin with a few suggestions on how to write an advertisement.

No matter how large the space or the circulation you pay for or how favorable the rates you secure, you are not getting your money's worth if the copy (i. e., the text matter of the advertisement) is weak or defective in any way.

Copy must do more than fill space. It must ' ' pull, ' ' bring results.

Good copy is not mechanical. It cannot be ground out of a hopper. If it could, there would be no need to study the problem of salesmanship on paper. You could just buy good copy as easily as you can printing.

Financial advertising copy can not be too strong, concise and original. It is not enough for the writer to know the inside facts about his particular proposition.

Indeed, strange as it may seem, you may be too close to your own business to realize its strongest advertising points.

That is the trouble with a good many bankers and other business men when it comes to handling their own advertising.

They do not see themselves and their business as others see them.

They are so immersed in the inside details of their institution's activities that it is hard for them to look at things from the broader standpoint of the disinterested outsider.

It will pay you to cultivate that valuable "outside" attitude, the viewpoint of the disinterested man or woman — your prospective customer. Don't look at the proposition entirely from your standpoint. Put yourself in the other fellow's place.

Emphasize "you" and "your" in the copy, not "we" and "our."

Get the "you" habit in your advertising. It is polite, and it is good business, too.

The personal element is one of the most effective factors in advertising, but it must be used with good taste.

It is all right to read the advertising matter of others for suggestions, but do not slavishly adapt ideas and phrases that seem to fit your case. It is better to be original. Have initiative. Explore your own proposition for new ideas. Then express them brightly and with all the literary skill you can command.

Make your advertising interesting and educating.

THE ACTUAL PREPARATION

As far as the actual preparation of an advertisement is concerned, no fixed rule can be laid down as to detail of method. There are as many different ways of doing it as there are successful advertisement writers.

Probably no two writers go about it in the same way when they sit down to prepare an advertisement. But experience has proved the wisdom of certain methods and has established some general principles.

Study every phase of your proposition thoroughly. Then set down in black and white all the talking points that occur to you.

Omit no fact or argument that might possibly be used to advantage.

With this list of talking points, you have your material ready. The next step is to outline a plan for the particular piece of advertising in hand, be it a series of newspaper advertisements, a circular or a booklet.

In a newspaper series the first thing to determine is the size of the space to be used. In deciding this point, remember that if you have not an appropriation large enough to warrant the continuous use of fairly large space, it is better to use a small space regularly and frequently than very large space at spasmodic intervals.

When it is planned to run a complete series, each individual advertisement should, if possible, emphazise a different point, although it is well sometimes to summarize other points, the theory being that there are always some readers who have not seen preceding advertisements and who may not see later ones.

In case of a pure type display advertisement, that is, one in which

The Old Chambers Street ^Reservoir of the MANHATTAN COMPANY

AMONGthe earliest known srcam engines in America /Vwere the two installed by the Manhattan Company as part of its water system, with a capacity of 691,200 galloris a day, which was the first adequate water supply in New York Gty. In fact, wherever one opens the hi*tc*y of the Bank of the Manhattan Company, one is conftortfed by examples of progress ahead of the time; by jure grasp of affairs; by far-sighted and sound leadership. As for tie past 121 years, so today; the depositor, the customer of the Bank of the Manhattan Company has at his command a Directorate of outstanding men in industry, commerce and .finance; and the personal services of Officers of long-standing experience.

Banko/^ Manhattan Company

40 Wall Street

Capital £5,000,000 Surplui and Uadnidei Profits $16.146494.10

UPTOWN OFFICE:-,. Ua'm S<*crc. Nc Y.r.

QUEENS BOROUGH OFFICES--.!™*., FlrnJtK, L»"J iW«*/C«>. /V *«»...,.

EDWIN S. LAfFBY P.A.ROWLEY D H P1ERSON FRANK L. HILTON V. W. SMITH JOHK-STEW ART BAKER

CASHIEH

H. M. BUCKUN W. A. RUSH CEO. S. DOWNING E. S. MACDONALD O G.ALEXANDER

A good example of modern bank advertising no drawing or design cut is used, the next important thing is to create a suitable heading for the advertisement.

There are very few persons who read through the copy of all the advertisements, but there are many who see all, or nearly all, of the heavy headlines. So the wise thing to do is to state your case clearly in the headlines.

' ' The meat at the top ' ' is the rule for good headlines just as much in an advertisement as in a news article. By constant practice the advertisement writer can learn to tell his whole story in the headlines and thus get a bigger circulation for his announcement, the head at the top and the name of the advertiser at the bottom making in themselves a complete advertisement for the benefit of the nearsighted and cursory readers of the paper.

Create a mental picture in the heading of your advertisement if you can and it will add materially to its force. For example, a recent advertisement of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Co. bore the heading, "Our Doors Stand Open to Those Needing Financial Advice. ' ' How much more pleasing that heading is than the bald statement, ' ' Financial Advice Given. ' ' Do a little experimenting on your own account. Take several bank advertisement headings of the stilted variety and transform them by conveying the same idea by means of a mental picture. This practice will prove rewarding if you ever write advertisements.

Here are some good headlines for advertisements :

BOND BARGAINS.

NOW IS THE INVESTOR'S OPPORTUNITY.

REGULAR INCOMES FROM NEW YORK REAL ESTATE.

WHEN YOU HAVE SAVED $100 GET A CERTIFICATE OF DEPOSIT.

IT IS EASY, SAFE AND PROFITABLE TO BANK BY MAIL.

Having chosen a suitable head, you have the subject of your advertisement. Pick out the talking point or points you wish to develop. Then sit down and write as fast as the ideas come to you. Never mind the length, drive your pencil as fast as it will go. Get your ideas down before they escape you.

Give real arguments and reasons, not just bald, unsupported statements. Be logical and consistent.

When you have written yourself out on that particular subject, rewrite your composition.

Cut out all unnecessary words. Condense. Boil it down, but not too much.

Rewrite your advertisement in the shortest, simplest, strongest words that come to you. If you have difficulty in choosing words have a synonym book at your elbow and use it.

It is better to use short, easy-reading paragraphs.

There are several reasons why this wholesale pruning process is a good thing. It saves valuable space, makes easy reading and permits more effective display.

USE SIMPLE WORDS

In writing a booklet or any piece of advertising literature it is always best to use simple language.

A fault that is quite common in the advertising of banks and other financial houses is that the language used is too stilted, formal and technical.

There are certain words which are of the daily vocabulary of eve^body, young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. They are the domestic, the closely personal words that we all use when we are just ourselves and not trying to be dignified or reserved.

As a rule, these words come of good old Anglo-Saxon stock. They are homely but strong. They are the heart of our English language, the most valuable heritage of our common tongue.

It is interesting to notice how few words of home and family and every-day life are of ponderous Latin or Greek derivation :

Mother

Brother

Home

Talk

Go

Father

Son

Work

Eat

Buy

Wife

Daughter

Think

Drink

Sell

Sister

Love

Walk

Do

Run

And so on, as far as you like. Think about it yourself and see if it is not true that these simple words are the ones most often used in daily life.

It is agreed that there is no better example of pure English than the King James version of the Bible, and its strongest passages are written in the simplest language.

A certain advertising copywriter has prepared a list of what he claims to be "The Strongest Hundred Words in the English Language." Among the words in the list that, despite the length of most of them, seem usable for bank advertising are these fourteen :

achievement confidence enthusiasm patriotism prosperity

ambition determination facts perseverance success

certainty efficiency knowledge progress

No matter how well educated we are, how much we have traveled and seen, or how old we are, we never get away from the influence of the simple language we learned at our mother's knee.

All this has a direct bearing upon your advertising problem.

You may think that the limited number of every-day words does not give you scope enough to tell your advertising story as fully as it ought to be told. That may be true, but there is nothing to prevent your making your language as simple as possible without sacrificing clearness or strength.

STRENGTH IN SIMPLICITY

It is really wonderful how much can be said in simple talk and how strong it is. There is an advertising man in New York, Leroy

Fairman by name, who has written a whole book in words of one syllable, and it is by no means a primer, either.

It pays the advertiser to be on the same ground as those he is trying to reach. Using commonly understood language is a great help in this direction.

When you meet a stranger you at once begin to talk about the weather or some other general topic.

Why is it?

Because it is easier to talk about something you have in common with the person you have met. Haven't yoii noticed how much better you get on with a stranger when you find out that he and you have visited the same places or perhaps used to know the same persons years ago ?

The inference is plain. Don't come at your prospective customers with "shop talk" and technical terms, which, while perfectly clear to you, may be all Greek to them.

Come down off your stilts. Use the terse, short, plain words with a grip in them, and don't talk over the heads of your prospective customers.

One of the largest banks in New York made a failure of the attempt to sell a splendid investment security through advertising in magazines, and those familiar with the matter say that the fault was not in the securities or the times, but in the copy, which was couched in terms so obscure to the average man that it was stale and unprofitable.

A WISE PUBLISHER

One magazine would not accept the advertising, because it was clearly seen that the copy had no pulling power, that there was no adequate "follow up" literature and that as a consequence the advertising would likely be a failure, as results later proved it to be.

The manager of the publication referred to was wise in his generation and preferred not to give this bank the opportunity to lay the blame for failure upon his medium.

There are today, and there always have been, persons who frown upon enthusiasm.

There are certain circles where it is considered very much out of place to give any evidence of this spirit. Enthusiasm is regarded as vulgar, and enthusiastic persons are not considered worthy of as much confidence and respect as are those who habitually hold their feelings in restraint and are never betrayed into a display of energy.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that nothing great ever has been or ever can be accomplished without enthusiasm somewhere on the part of somebody.

Until the past few years very little enthusiasm was shown in advertising. Look at the advertising pages in a file of magazines of twenty years ago. Then compare them with the advertising sections of modern magazines.

There has been a vast improvement not only in the mechanical end of advertising — in illustration, engraving and printing — but there is now a life, a vigor, an enthusiasm in advertising copj r which was almost totally absent in the advertising of a comparatively few years ago.

That, with the enormous development of the circulation of periodicals, accounts for the great growth of the advertising business and the prosperity of institutions that advertise intelligently.

It is a mighty good thing for the advertiser that human nature is the same everywhere, and it is a mighty poor advertiser that doesn't make the most of it by putting the right kind of enthusiasm into his advertisements, his business letters, booklets, circulars and all the printed matter that represents him and seeks to further his business.

It is right and proper to be self-respecting in your advertising, but just remember that enthusiasm, like faith, can remove mountains, out that unbending dignity rarely pays dividends.

ABOUT ILLUSTRATIONS

The use of a good illustration may add 50 per cent, to the "pulling" power of an advertisement.

In the first place, a good, strong illustration serves as an eye-catcher. Then it may present an argument in itself. It can be made so striking that it will hammer in a point indelibly and prove of more value than the rest of the advertisement.

For example, a real estate company could embellish its advertisement of some suburban residence property with such an attractive view of one of the homes that descriptive words or persuasive argument would be almost unnecessary.

A savings bank, by using a cut to show a page of a pass book, could illustrate graphically how savings grow.

A good illustration tells its story at a glance, a story intelligible to young and old alike, to the educated and the illiterate. It can touch the feelings and lead to favorable action in the direction suggested — often more quickly than an appeal to reason, because most persons, men as well as women, act more upon impulse than they do as the result of cold logic.

There must always be a close connection between the idea brought out by the illustration and the thought expressed in the copy of the advertisement. Unless this rule is observed, there will be waste motion, so to speak, in the advertising. The picture of a pretty girl or of a beautiful piece of scenery probably will attract passing attention, but unless the illustration is tied up in some way with the copy, it will not help the advertisement. On the contrary, it is more likely to injure it by distracting attention from the main purpose of the announcement.

It is not necessary for the advertisement writer to be an artist, too, but he should have ideas and be able to sketch them up roughly so that an artist can readily see the point and carry it out effectively.

The regular use of a trademark cut in advertising is good because, besides serving to draw attention to the notice, it identifies the advertisement so that even if not always read, an unconscious influence is exerted upon the mind of the reading public. It helps build up a prestige, a good will, for the advertiser which may become one of his most valuable assets.

If you adopt and use continuously a certain distinctive style of type "set up" in your advertisements you will get some valuable secondary or indirect advertising. By creating a style of your own you get more than you pay for because in this way you get the full benefit of the cumulative effect of all your preceding publicity.

The emblems of some banks are so well known that if they appeared in the newspapers or the street cars without a word of type most of those who saw them would know what they stood for. That illustrates the cumulative effect of advertising.

However, we are not advocating the wisdom of any such course. It should be remembered that there is a new generation constantly growing up that must be educated in the way it should go and the best thing for the advertiser to do it is to keep hammering into the minds of the people not only his name and emblem!, but also interesting facts about his institution and the service it offers the public.

In short, our advice is — get a good emblem to represent you, make it known by advertising and then back up your advertising by making good on your promises and by courteous and prompt attention to the wants of your customers.

HARMONY IN STYLE

Do not use several different styles of type in one advertisement, and always remember that there is great strength in simplicity.

Do not overlook the value of display obtained by the liberal use of white space.

It is always well in sending" copy to the printer to make a ' l layout ' ' similar to that shown on page 13. It helps the printer to carry out accurately the idea you have in your mind and insures a better looking advertisement. That is, in case you have studied the matter and know something about what you do want. Otherwise it is better to leave it to the judgment of the printer.

Always ask to see proof. Otherwise you may be made to say some embarrassing things in your advertisements, and mistakes will occur even then, if you are not very careful in reading proof.

TYPOGRAPHY

The author recently contributed an article on the typography of bank advertisements to ' ' The Printing Art ' ' magazine. The ideas and illustrations contained therein are reproduced herewith as appropriate in this connection.

Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun. Some modern advertising sharks who announce ponderously that the first duty of an advertisement is to attract attention may be surprised to know that back in the closing years of the eighteenth century Addison said, "The great art in writing advertisements is the rinding out a proper method to catch the reader's eye," — but the very fact that this principle has been known for such a long time only serves to impress upon us how true it must be. However, later experience has taught us a corollary to this proposition, and that is that, having caught the reader's eye, it is desirable for an advertisement to please the eye, so that it is not so hastily withdrawn from the advertisement as not to read the message thoroughly.

There is no reason why the rules for effective typography should in any way differ in the case of bank advertising from the advertising of anything else, but somehow or other the tradition seems to have grown up that, because financial institutions are supposed to be ultra-conservative and dignified, their advertising representatives should likewise partake of those characteristics. Years ago when the "bank card" was the standard form of bank advertising there was dignity at the expense of effectiveness, and we still "have with us" similar characteristics in the great majority of advertisements of stocks and bonds, although in them in many cases dignity is sacrificed through an undue use of display, which after all fails to increase their effectiveness. Take for example Figure B where quantities of white space and much black Cheltenham Bold blinds one to the small paragraph of an Old-Style face and makes a badly balanced advertisement. An example of a present-day English bank advertisement in this same style is shown in Figure A, perhaps indicating that this was the original form of financial announcement. Nowadays, however, even the largest and most conservative banking institutions have learned to combine dignity with effectiveness in their advertising. How it is done is illustrated by some of the specimen bank and trust company advertisements reproduced herewith.