TRUTH AS A CONSTITUENT OF ADVERTISING 239 we have given the beauty of women a high place. In the advertising of this beauty, truth should come first. Truth in advertising begins with the product itself. Each one of you goes all out to be sure you make the best possible cold cream, lipstick, make-up foundation, face powder. You constantly seek ways to im- prove your products. You call in dermatological counsel, expert scien- tific laboratories to see how to make a good product better, how to help your customers use it more effec- tively. Through the hard way of testing and self-criticism you ap- proach perfection, yet never quite reach it. You have guiding rules and prin- ciples of your profession as we do in our business to restrain those who try to cheat. The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission were created to protect the public against such violators. But why need you be concerned? You know that their test of truth is just the same as yours, "Does this product back up its claims?" You do not try to put something over on the truth. In- stead, you are driven by an urge from within to discover new truth. You are guided by the laws of the Universe, and inspired with a high regard for the integrity of your pro- fession as a scientist. While we lean upon you for this material truth about the product, we together must also interpret that product to the woman in terms of what it will do for her. "Imparting or improving beauty, particularly the beauty of the complexion" which is Webster's idea of the cosmetic business, involves a degree of emo- tional truth which seems to trans- cend the slide rule or the precise legal phrase. I need hardly remind the men in this room that the beauty of wom- en's faces in 1947 transformed 1,992,000 males in this country from easy-going bachelors to hustling Husbands. Although to each one of these 1,992,000 men the face of his bride was in truth beautiful, that same woman's face when observed by certain other men would not be beautiful to them. Furthermore, in 1947, the faces of 471,000 women, which to an equal number of individ- ual men had once seemed beautiful enough to precipitate a wedding, now became sufficiently unappetiz- ing to these same men as to cause divorce. And of course the faces of these men underwent corresponding changes in the eyes of their erst- while wives, although ihe objective photographs of each would fail to reveal sufficient changes to justify divorce in a court of law. Now if you want to apply these disquieting contradictions to ad- vertising copy, take a love letter. A love letter is perhaps the best piece of selling copy the average man ever writes. It has an emotional quality which induces action, gets results. It is written to one woman by a man who is intensely interested in that woman. Test it by any standard of good copy. wri. ting a.nd you will find that it measures up surprisingly well. It is a vividly accurate index of

240 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY a state of mind, as any member of the legal profession proves when it be- comes his duty to establish the cash value of a love letter in a court of law. Over one hundred and fifty years ago a young Scot named Robert Burns wrote this to his sweetheart: "As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I: And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry: "Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run." These words have been treasured truth for over a hundred and fifty years. Today from the gold-edged leaves of leather-bound books in many countries of the world and in many languages they still speak the truth that women thrill to hear and strong men would say if they only could. You can see now why material truth in cosmetic advertising is not enough. For the "imparting or im- proving of beauty" woman must OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS also be reached by that deeper emo- tional truth which transcends any arbitrary human code, and inspires woman to realize her highest self through her beauty which others see first. To sum up: What does truth as an ingredient of advertising mean to each one of us personally? Simply this: As both lenses of bin- oculars give us greater depth and clarity, so do we perceive truth in clearer perspective through both its material and emotional aspects. The more clearly we see truth, the less need we have for outside regulations in our advertising copy, the greater the impact of our advertising on the minds of the consumer, the less we need be concerned about the' claims of our competitors. With such in- ner vision our own individual con- science points the way as a compass needle to the North Star. We are re-charged with new creative power through the fresh promise of this ancient wisdom: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."