Tuesday 22 June 2010

TENT TIME


Vital St Luke's tent preparation for Glastonbury.

1 comment:

Qui Chung Po said...

Some say you can’t do business in a tent: but Phineas T. Barnum might not agree, especially about the uses of advertising in business; for example, as can be seen from the quote below:

Men in business will sometimes tell you that they have tried advertising, and that it did not pay. This is only when advertising is done sparingly and grudgingly. Homoeopathic doses of advertising will not pay perhaps it is like half a potion of physic, making the patient sick, but effecting nothing. Administer liberally, and the cure, will be sure and permanent.

Some say, “they cannot afford to advertise;” they mistake they cannot afford not to advertise. In this country, where everybody reads the newspapers, the man must have a thick skull who does not see that these are the cheapest and best medium through which he can speak to the public, where he is to find his customers. Put on the appearance of business, and generally the reality will follow. The farmer plants his seed, and while he is sleeping, his corn and potatoes are growing. So with advertising. While you are sleeping, or eating, or conversing with one set of customers, your advertisement is being read by hundreds and thousands of persons who never saw you, nor heard of your business, and never would, had it not been for your advertisement appearing in the newspapers.

The business men of this country do not, as a general thing, appreciate the advantages of advertising thoroughly. Occasionally the public are aroused at witnessing the success of a Swaim, a Brandreth, a Townsend, a Genin, or a Root, and express astonishment at the rapidity with which these gentlemen acquire fortunes, not reflecting that the same path is open to all who dare pursue it. But it needs nerve and faith. The former, to enable you to launch out thousands on the uncertain waters of the future; the latter, to teach you that after many days it shall surely return, bringing an hundred or a thousand fold to him who appreciates the advantages of “printer's ink” properly applied.

P. T. Barnum. ‘Sundry Business Enterprises’, Ch XIV, The Life of P. T. Barnum (1855)

…now there’s advertising sense for you…