Net Advertising Group

ONE DAY in my last year as an advertising agency executive in Chicago I had a telephone call from the western advertising manager of a well-known magazine.
He asked if he could see me immediately on a matter of importance. Shortly thereafter he arrived in my office, somewhat out of breath.
"We are having a meeting today," he said, "of our entire western sales staff. Its purpose is to discuss how we can improve our selling.
"In our discussions we have tried to analyze the selling methods of other successful publications and salesmen. And among these we have been particularly impressed by the success of Mr.VV in his selling of the Weekly.”
"After studying just how he is so successful we have come to the conclusion that it all rest just one thing: he doesn't sell space: he sells Ideas.”
"And so," he continued, with enthusiasm, "we have decided that that is just. what we are going to, do. From here oil We are not going to sell spa at all. Beginning tomorrow morning every single one of us is going to sell Ideas!"
I said I thought that was just dandy, but wondered what it was that he wanted to discuss with me.
`Well," he said; somewhat ruefully "we could see that what we ought to do is to sell ideas, all right. But that is where we sort of got stuck.
"What we are not clear about is just how to get ideas.
"So I said maybe you could tell us, and that is what I am here for.
"You have produced a lot of advertising ideas. Just how do you get them? The boys are waiting for me to come back and tell them."
Now I know that if I had not been so flattered by this question, and if my questioner had not been so obviously serious in asking it, I would have had a hearty fit of laughing at this point.
I thought at the time that I had never heard a funnier or more naive question. And I was completely unable to give any helpful answer to it.
But it struck me afterward that maybe the question "How do you get ideas?" wasn't as silly as it sound. Maybe there was some answer to it. And I thought about it;
An idea, I thought, has some of that mysterious quality which romance lends to tales of the sudden appearance of islands in the South Seas.
There, according to ancient mariners, in spots where the charts showed only deep blue sea-there would suddenly appear a lovely atoll above the surface of the waters. An air of magic hung about it.
And so it is, I thought, with Ideas. They appear just as suddenly above the surface of the mind; and with that same air of magic and unaccountability.
But the scientist knows that the South Sea atoll is the work of countless, unseen coral builders, working below the surface of the sea.
And so I asked myself: " an idea; too, like this? Is it only, the final result of a long series of unseen idea-building processes which go on beneath 'the surface of the conscious mind?
"If so, can these processes be identified, so that they can consciously be followed and utilized? In short, can a formula or technique be developed in answer to the question: How do you get ideas?"
What I now propose to you is the result of a longtime pondering of these questions; and of close observation of the work of idea-producing men with whom I have had associations.
This has brought me to the conclusion that the production of ideas is as definite a process as the production of Fords; that the production of ideas, too, runs on an assembly line; that in this production the mind follows an operative technique which can be learned and controlled; and that its effective use is just as much a matter of practice in the technique as is the effective use of any tool.
If you ask me why I am willing to give away the valuable formula of this discovery I will confide to you that experience has taught me two things about it:
First, the formula is so simple to state that few who hear it really believe in it.
Second, while simple to state, it actually requires the hardest kind of intellectual work to follow, so that not all who accept it use it.
Thus I broadcast this formula with no real fear of glutting the market in which I make my living.