ScientificAdvertising.com Each early mariner in this sea mapped his own separate course. There were no charts to guide him. Not a lighthouse marked a harbor, not a buoy showed a reef. The wrecks were unrecorded, so countless ventures came to grief on the same rocks and shoals. Advertising was a gamble, a speculation of the rashest sort. One man's guess on the proper course was as likely to be as good as another’s. There were no safe pilots, because few sailed the same course twice. The condition has been corrected. Now the only uncertainties pertain to people and to products, not to methods. It is hard to measure human idiosyncrasies, the preferences and prejudices, the likes and dislikes that exist. We cannot say that an article will be popular, but we know how to sell it in the most effective way. Ventures may fail, but the failures are not disasters. Losses, when they occur, are but trifling. And the causes are factors which has nothing to do with the advertising. Advertising has flourished under these new conditions. It has multiplied in volume, in prestige and respect. The perils have increased many fold. Just because the gamble has become a science, the speculation a very conservative business. These facts should be recognized by all. This is no proper field for sophistry or theory, or for any other will-o'-the-wisp. The blind leading the blind is ridiculous. It is pitiful in a field with such vast possibilities. Success is a rarity, a maximum success an impossibility, unless one is guided by laws as immutable as the law of gravitation. So our main purpose here is to set down those laws, and to tell you how to prove them for yourself. After them come a myriad of variations. No two advertising campaigns are ever conducted on lines that are identical. Individuality is an essential. Imitation is a reproach. But those variable things which depend on ingenuity have no place in a text book on advertising. This is for groundwork only. Our hope is to foster advertising through a better understanding. To place it on a business basis. To have it recognized as among the
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