The Project Gutenberg EBook of Breeder Reaction, by Winston Marks

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Title: Breeder Reaction

Author: Winston Marks

Illustrator: Kelly Freas

Release Date: April 21, 2010 [EBook #32077]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction April 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

Breeder Reaction

By Winston Marks

Illustrated by Kelly Freas

_The remarkable thing about Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder
was that it gave you that lovely, radiant, atomic look--just
the way the advertisements said it would. In fact, it also
gave you a little something_ more!

* * * * *

The advertising game is not as cut and dried as many people think.
Sometimes you spend a million dollars and get no results, and then
some little low-budget campaign will catch the public's fancy and walk
away with merchandising honors of the year.

Let me sound a warning, however. When this happens, watch out! There's
always a reason for it, and it isn't always just a matter of bright
slogans and semantic genius. Sometimes the product itself does the
trick. And when this happens people in the industry lose their heads
trying to capitalize on the "freak" good fortune.

This can lead to disaster. May I cite one example?

I was on loan to Elaine Templeton, Inc., the big cosmetics firm, when
one of these "prairie fires" took off and, as product engineer from
the firm of Bailey Hazlitt & Persons, Advertising Agency, I figured I
had struck pure gold. My assay was wrong. It was fool's gold on a pool
of quicksand.

Madame "Elaine", herself, had called me in for consultation on a huge
lipstick campaign she was planning--you know, NOW AT LAST, A TRULY
KISS-PROOF LIPSTICK!--th