This approach to advertising parity products does not insult the intelligence of consumers. Who can blame you for putting your best foot forward? Repeat your winners If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency. Research shows that the readership of an advertisement does not decline when it is run several times in the same magazine. Readership remains at the same level throughout at least four repetitions. You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. The advertisement which sold a refrigerator to couples who got married last year will probably be just as successful with couples who get married this year. A good advertisement can be thought of as a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as they come into the market. Get a good radar, and keep it sweeping. Henry Ford once said to a copywriter on his account, ‘Bill, that campaign of yours is dandy, but do we have to run it forever?’ To which the copywriter replied, ‘Mr Ford, the campaign has not yet appeared.’ Ford had seen it too often at too many meetings. The best way to settle such arguments is to measure the selling effectiveness of your campaign at regular intervals, and to go on running it until the research shows that it has worn out. Word of mouth It sometimes happens that advertising campaigns enter the culture. Thus the musical theme in a Maxwell House coffee commercial became Number 7 on the hit parade. After Commander Whitehead started appearing in Schweppes advertising, he became a popular participant in talk shows on television. This kind of thing is manna from heaven, but nobody knows how to do it on purpose. At least, I don’t. Fifty years ago attempts were made in England to cultivate word-of- mouth advertising by spreading anecdotes like this one: ‘An old farmer was walking down a road, bent double with