How to Lose Customers

Some 400 advertising artists and copywriters squirmed in their chairs. In a spirit of self-analysis, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the War Advertising Council had called a meeting at Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel to ask what was wrong with wartime advertising. A twice-wounded, discharged U.S. soldier named William J. Caldwell was telling them. Said he to the artists: go easy on those drawings of bright-eyed, posturing, immaculate soldiers. Such pictures merely irritate the weary, muddy boys in the foxholes. To the copywriters: watch those smug and boastful headlines.

"When you publish an ad on the part your product is playing in this war . . . will manufacturers please give some credit to the poor fellow doing the fighting? . . . The enormous amount of bragging stirs up a very deep and lasting resentment. . . ."

One Caldwell example: a U.S. manufacturer, with "unutterable conceit," ran a picture of his plane over the headline:

"WHO'S AFRAID OF THE NEW FOCKE-WULF?" The ad was posted on the bulletin board of a bomber squadron in England. Every pilot in the group, including the colonel, signed it "I am," and sent it back.

As an advertising man, returned from the Pacific air war to the firm of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, Copywriter Caldwell offered some advice: "If you're to regard the ten million men in the services ... as future customers, it is important not to get their backs up."

The advertising men found Veteran Caldwell's estimate corroborated in other quarters. From all the evidence, U.S. advertising had struck some sour notes with the men in uniform. Variety, after interviewing news commentators returned from overseas, reported: "The G.I.s, they say, resent the constant emphasis on the rose-tinted postwar conditions that will prevail back home at a time when the burden of the battle must still be borne. The commentators say the fighting boys, after catching a gander at such ads in magazines and newspapers sent to the front, throw them away in disgust!"

Foreign Newscaster Eric Sevareid told readers of the Saturday Review of Literature: "What annoys . . . the more intelligent soldiers are the broad suggestions that one particular spark plug, engine assembly or airframe is unbeatable, naturally better than the enemy's, and is winning the war. ... If advertising men had to sign their own stuff. . . . They would soon find out from their 'fan mail' what pleases and what outrages their public, especially those members of it now wearing uniforms or artificial legs."

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