Advertising is a serious thing with the business man of today. One authority claims that seventy-five percent of all advertising is unprofitable. Every business man is anxious that no part of these unprofitable advertisements shall fall to his lot. The enormity of the expense, the keenness of competition, and the great liability of failure have awakened the advertising world to the pressing need for some basis of assurance in its hazardous undertakings.

I have attempted to read broadly on the subject of advertising; I have taken an active part in various kinds of advertising; I have been in intimate contact with manufacturers, salesmen, publishers, professional advertisers, etc., and in all that I have read, and in all my conversations, I have never seen or heard any reference to anything except psychology which could furnish a stable foundation for a theory of advertising. Nothing else is ever suggested as a possibility. Ordinarily the business person does not realize that he means psychology when he says that he "must know his customers' wants, what will catch their attention, what will impress them and lead them to buy," etc. In all these expressions he is saying that he must be a psychologist. He is talking about the minds of his customers, and psychology is nothing but a stubborn and systematic attempt to understand and explain the workings of the minds of these very people.

The psychology of advertising has reached a stage in its development where all that has thus far been accomplished should be reconsidered. The worthless should be discarded and the valuable brought out into due prominence in systematic arrangement. In view of this condition of affairs the author has assumed the pleasing task of systematizing the subject of the psychology of advertising and of presenting it in such a form that it will be of distinct practical value to all who are interested in business promotion.