Promotion is, of course, an essential part of marketing.

It is the action of making something well known and well thought of.

It is the art of offering what will be responded to.

RESPONSE is the key word here. Whether it’s in terms of services sold or commodities sold or communication or goodwill, it’s response that is the test of all promotion.

In order to get response you’ve got to first find out what people want. You’ve got to find out what people consider valuable. When you know what people want and what they consider valuable, you know what they will respond to.

It takes surveys. It’s no good flying blind or trying to guess at it. You won’t KNOW until you survey.

So your first question on all promotion is, “Am I absolutely sure, before I invest any money in this promotion (make-up, printing, postage) that people will consider what I am promoting valuable enough to exchange their hard-won valuables for it?”

The answer lies in the results of your survey. Promotion is always, always, always based on surveys, and it must include the exchange factor.

The real test of good promotion is: Are you getting an effective exchange? The exchange may be communication, it may be goodwill, but — are you getting exchange?

Communication and goodwill are valuable in themselves and, as well, they precede and lead to the material exchange of valuable for valuable. So any of these is considered effective exchange in promotion.

One must, however, in order to continue to survive and to continue to promote, arrive very shortly at a material exchange of valuable for valuable — a consumption of the product one is promoting. On a material exchange basis, if you are trying to produce something and nobody is busy absorbing or consuming it, you are in trouble right away because nobody is going to support you, and that’s where your income is. So the final value of promotion and where you get the money to do the promotion is in the CONSUMPTION of the thing you’re promoting.

The important datum here is YOU PROMOTE WHAT CAN BE DELIVERED AND CONSUMED.

Make it a firm policy that you push what you have ready to put in public hands at the time of the promotion and that you do not heavily promote future products not yet in hand.

Then, in any promo piece, be it an ad, brochure, a flier, a pamphlet, a poster, you follow the line of:

1. Attract

2. Interest

3. Get your message across

That sequence, followed, can look many different ways in many different promo pieces depending upon the subject, the mood, the design and the copy of the piece. But in any successful promotion, the basic sequence will be found to be just that: Attract-Interest-Message.

There are two guiding rules to be followed in any type of promotion:

1. Don’t soft sell.

2. Don’t set us up for false claims.

The results of Dianetics and Scientology are fantastic enough to please all but the most psychotic in the society. These results have never before been seen on the planet. But there are always SPs out there who don’t want people to get well and who use literature to get you in trouble.

The art of hard sell is you tell people to do something. Hard sell is based on knowing and promoting in the line of truth and not being reasonable about people who want “other things” and “other practices.” There is nothing to compare with Dianetics and Scientology. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself.

So don’t understate things in your promotion. Just tell the truth and you’ll find that it’s very effective.

A degrade of the quality of something means an action that lowers or reduces its excellence or degree of excellence.

In promotion, a quality degrade would be a poorly designed piece or a sloppy printing job or dull, cliche-ridden or otherwise inappropriate copy or any other of a number of carelessly done or not done actions that would show up in the final result.

Quality degrades can be caused by:

a. Willful unhattedness, or

b. Lack of good taste or a sense of the fitness of things, or

c. Knowing products or promotion are of poor quality but, for one reason or another, neglecting to remedy them or call them to the attention of those who can and will remedy them.

There is no excuse, with all of the tech at our disposal, for any of the above.

The standards for the quality of our promotion must be high and must be maintained. We are not playing children’s games. This is your show and your planet too. You aren’t doing this just for me — but I am sure you know that.

We have an incomparable technology. In order to get it delivered we MUST communicate and in the communication we MUST interest people in order to be seen and listened to.

A quality degrade in promotion cuts our comm lines to a greater or lesser degree. And the world depends in no small measure on our comm lines.

Thus, quality degrades are no slight matter. They cut our comm lines because, with dropped-out quality, what we make and the promotion of what we make would be so flawed that it would not communicate.

So realize, when promoting, that the world needs us and our technology. Make it well known and well thought of.

And keep the quality of your promotion such that it does attract and interest and communicate and bring response.