Word: salesmanship
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Among institutional and industrial advertisers-and even in consumer-oriented industries where products are distinctively different and personal salesmanship is still a vital element-advertising is considered a "controllable'' expense to be cut in lean times. Thus General Motors, the world's biggest advertiser (1961 budget: $142 million), pegs its advertising budget for the coming year directly to what it thinks its sales will be. But for manufacturers of low-priced packaged goods such as beer, proprietary drugs and processed foods, advertising is the one thing that can notably increase sales-which is one reason...
...time when the U.S. is geared to produce more than it consumes and when nothing would help the economy more than a surge in consumer spending. As the U.S. economy grows in size and complexity and the cost of labor increases, advertising is an indispensable substitute for the personal salesmanship of times past. The genial clerk who used to sell undecided customers with the assurance that "my own family uses it" is steadily giving way to the self-service shopping cart. Today, advertising is the magnet that draws customers into the nation's supermarkets and department stores...
...that they are quickly copied. The bulk of menthol cigarette ads-a boy, a girl (shoeless) and a babbling brook-are virtually indistinguishable. Often, too. the less expensive or distinctive a product is, the more pretentiously it is advertised-which leads admen to argue whether it is good salesmanship to make a snob appeal for a non-snob product. The most notable voice raised in opposition is that of Fairfax Cone of Chicago's Foote, Cone & Belding agency, who argues that an ad should come as close as possible to saying what a personal salesman would say. "Whoever heard...
...jobs. "A lamentable mockery of the principle of interdependence in NATO," cried Tory M.P. Stephen Hastings, whose constituency includes the plant where the Blue Water was being developed. "I have little doubt that we could have sold it in Germany and perhaps France but for ruthless American salesmanship backed by economic sanctions...
...learned, U.S. products often sell well overseas because of design, quality, speedy delivery, or simply because the goods are "Made in U.S.A." But businessmen don't do as well as they should in foreign markets, says the Commerce Department, because of a failure to use their proudest skill: salesmanship. "Out of 300,000 U.S. manufacturers, there aren't more than 15,000 who are doing anything at all about foreign trade," complains Commerce Department Export Director Edward Scriven. To maintain U.S. trade centers in London, Frankfurt and Bangkok, says he, "we have to canvass...