Murder Must Advertise (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)

by Dorothy L. Sayers

Mr. Ingleby came tearing up, with such a look on his face—you were as white as a sheet, Mr. Ingleby, you really were.” “Possibly,” said Mr. Ingleby, a little put out. “Three years in this soul-searing profession have not yet robbed me of all human feeling. But that will come in time.”

“I see. Just something about ‘Better than Butter and half the price.’ Simple appeal to the pocket.” “Yes, but you mustn’t knock butter. They sell butter as well.” “Oh!” “You can say it’s as good as butter.” “But in that case,” objected Mr. Bredon, “what does one find to say in favour of butter? I mean, if the other stuff’s as good and doesn’t cost so much, what’s the argument for buying butter?” “You don’t need an argument for buying butter. It’s a natural, human instinct.”

You’ll soon find that the biggest obstacle to good advertising is the client.

“This place is run like a Government office,” went on Ingleby. “Hustle’s not wanted and initiative and curiosity are politely shown the door.”

“Hullo! here’s Mr. Tallboy. I expect he wants you, Mr. Ingleby.” “What, again?” “Nutrax have cancelled that half-double,” announced Mr. Tallboy with gloomy triumph. “They’ve just sent up from the conference to say that they want something special to put up against the new Slumbermalt campaign, and Mr. Hankin says will you get something out and let him have it in half an hour.” Ingleby uttered a loud yell, and Bredon, laying down the index-card, gazed at him open-mouthed. “Damn and blast Nutrax,” said Ingleby. “May all its directors get elephantiasis, locomotor ataxy and ingrowing toenails!”

that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity’s worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style;

that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.

IT HAS ALREADY BEEN hinted that Tuesday was a day of general mortification in Pym’s copy-department. The trouble was caused by Messrs. Toule & Jollop, proprietors of Nutrax, Maltogene, and Jollop’s Concentrated Lactobeef Tablets for Travellers. Unlike the majority of clients who, though all tiresome in their degree, exercised their tiresomeness by post from a reasonable distance and at reasonable intervals, Messrs. Toule & Jollop descended upon Pym’s every Tuesday for a weekly conference. While there, they reviewed the advertising for the coming week, rescinding the decisions taken at the previous week’s conference, springing new schemes unexpectedly upon Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, keeping those two important men shut up in the Conference Room for hours on end, to the interruption of office-business, and generally making nuisances of themselves.

Mr. Toule or Mr. Jollop then pointed out to Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong a great number of weaknesses in both sketch and copy. Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, sycophantically concurring in everything the client said, confessed themselves at a loss and invited suggestions from Mr. Toule (or Mr. Jollop). The latter, being, as most clients are, better at destructive than constructive criticism, cudgelled his brains into stupor, and this reduced himself to a condition of utter blankness, upon which the persuasiveness of Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong could work with hypnotic effect. After half an hour of skilled treatment, Mr. Jollop (or Mr. Toule) found himself returning with a sense of relief and refreshment to the rejected lay-out. He then discovered that it was really almost exactly what he required. It only needed the alteration of a sentence and the introduction of a panel about gift-coupons. Mr. Armstrong then sent the lay-out up again to Mr. Tallboy, with a request that he would effect these necessary alterations. Mr. Tallboy, realizing with delight that these involved nothing more drastic than the making of a new lay-out and the complete re-writing of the copy, sought out the copy-writer whose initials appeared on the original type-script, instructing him to cut out three lines and incorporate the client’s improvements, while he himself laid the advertisement out afresh.

“I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.” “Ah, yes—but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over—once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands—including you and me.”

“How should anything be sacred to an advertiser?” demanded Ingleby, helping himself to four lumps of sugar. “We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers and it naturally blunts our finer feelings. ‘Mother! has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?’ ‘Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?’ ‘Are you satisfied about your Drains?’ ‘Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?’ ‘Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this question.’ ‘Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?’ ‘Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?’ ‘Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?’ ‘If anything Happened to you, would your Loved Ones be Safe?’ ‘Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?’ ‘You think that Carpet is Clean—but is it?’ ‘Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?’ Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn’t rise up and slay us.”

The new copy-writer was surprisingly industrious that day. He was still in his room, toiling over Sanfect (“Wherever there’s Dirt there’s Danger!” “The Skeleton in the Watercloset,” “Assassins Lurk in your Scullery!” “Deadlier than Shell-Fire—GERMS!!!”) when Mrs. Crump led in her female army to attack the day’s accumulated dirt—armed, one regrets to say, not with Sanfect, but with plain yellow soap and water. “Come in, come in!” cried Mr. Bredon, genially, as the good lady paused reverently at his door. “Come and sweep me and my works away with the rest of the rubbish.”

Mr. Pym won’t have nobody about the office in the dinner-hour, sir, not without, of course, it’s the boy that goes round with the disinfectant, sir.” “Ah, of course! Spray with Sanfect and you’re safe.” “That’s right, sir, except that they uses Jeyes’ Fluid.” “Oh, indeed,” said Mr. Bredon, struck afresh by the curious reluctance of advertising firms to use the commodities they extol for a living.

Now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality—except, of course, as regards his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money—” “How about truth in advertising?” “Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There’s yeast in bread, but you can’t make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously, “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words ‘with’ and ‘from.’ Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or, not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you—such are the niceties of our English tongue.”

“Sinning above his station in life?” “Very much so.

And there you are.” “Just as simple as that,” said Wimsey. “Of course it’s simple, only men love to make mysteries.”

All over London the lights flickered in and out, calling on the public to save its body and purse: SOPO SAVES SCRUBBING—NUTRAX FOR NERVES—CRUNCHLETS ARE CRISPER—EAT PIPER PARRITCH—DRINK POMPAYNE—ONE WHOOSH AND ITS CLEAN—OH, BOY! ITS TOMBOY TOFFEE—NOURISH NERVES WITH NUTRAX—FARLEY’S FOOTWEAR TAKES YOU FURTHER—IT ISN’T DEAR, IT’S DARLING—DARLING’S FOR HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES—MAKE ALL SAFE WITH SANFECT—WHIFFLETS FASCINATE. The presses, thundering and growling, ground out the same appeals by the millions: ASK YOUR GROCER—ASK YOUR DOCTOR—ASK THE MAN WHO’S TRIED IT—MOTHERS! GIVE IT TO YOUR CHILDREN—HOUSEWIVES! SAVE MONEY—HUSBANDS! INSURE YOUR LIVES—WOMEN! DO YOU REALIZE?—DONT SAY SOAP, SAY SOPO! Whatever you’re doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you’re buying, pause and buy something different! Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up! Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied. If once you are satisfied, all our wheels will run down. Keep going—and if you can’t, try Nutrax for Nerves!

She suddenly became afraid of the trees and the darkness. The good, comforting drinks were taking back the support they gave and offering her instead a horrible apprehensiveness.

Where, Bredon asked himself, did the money come from that was to be spent so variously and so lavishly? If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen? If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease?

Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.

My brother, being an English gentleman, possesses a library in all his houses, though he never opens a book. This is called fidelity to ancient tradition.

“I take it,” pursued Mr. Bredon, “that you want to get something out of me. People of your sort always do. What is it?” “I’ve no objection to being frank with you,” replied Major Milligan. “How nice it is to hear anybody say that. It always prepares one for a lie to follow. Fore-warned is fore-armed, isn’t it?”

It’s a curious thing, but people cannot resist anonymous letters. It’s like free sample offers. They appeal to all one’s lower instincts.”