ABSTRACT
One day there came an application for information concerning the cost of inserting a small advertisement in all the best papers throughout the country. It was from Augusta, Maine. The name of the applicant was not in the rate books of the mercantile agencies and was not known to us. It was the sort of inquiry that comes into every advertising agency with much frequency, and usually means about as much as if a boy should ask, at the country store, how they sold raisins, and on being told the price, and asked if he wanted some, should answer, “No, only I thought I’d like to know what they would cost if I did.” To prepare ourselves to answer such an inquiry, as fully as it would be done if it came from a customer known to be in earnest and intending to do business, would take the time of a competent man a good many hours, and the service would cost the office as much as forty or fifty dollars. The answer to such an inquiry has been carefully worked out in many an advertising agency, and after due delay, a follow-up system has revealed a man no more interested than the boy who would investigate the raisin market, and the inquirer from the agency might be told that it was an oversight that no acknowledgment had been sent of the receipt of the information ; but, as matter of fact, the letter had not been read yet; and the inquiry was really only made to decide a bet—or something of that sort.
