Advertisement

“ In America, on the other hand, the sensation advertisement runs to absolute riot. Every contortion and combination that type is capable of is resorted to in order to attract attention. The advertisements are placed at every angle to the letter-press, and disfigure the look of even the first papers in the country to a most marvellous degree. ”

“ It may be so, but my informants have always been the owners or agents of advertising mediums. The traders who have been most fortunate as advertisers, cannot tell themselves to what their success is due. All they know is, that if they leave off thrusting their goods under the eyes, and up to the mouths, and into the pockets of the public, their sales fall off at once. But whether one form of advertisement attracts more than another, they cannot discover. ”

“ A French writer says that “The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an ordinary advertisement; the second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion, he looks at the price; the fifth insertion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion, he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion, he purchases.” Your object in advertising is to make the public understand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep advertising, until you have imparted that information, all the money you have spent is lost. ”

“ Generally an advertisement of this sort, or anything that can fairly be called an advertisement of goods for sale, is held to mean simply that the advertiser has these goods for sale and names a price he is putting upon them; he invites customers to come in and deal with him in regard to them. It is an invitation to come and make a trade rather than a direct offer of a trade. ”

“ An advertisement must first of all demand and win attention. The first word, the first sentence, must be strong enough to arrest the eye of the average reader, who runs hastily through the advertising matter of a magazine, newspaper, or other medium. It must catch the reader’s interest, and hold his attention long enough to lead him into the remainder of the argument. ”

“ Advertisements.—The advertisement is an outgrowth of the notice, and in its simplest form is still a notice, as when the expense of printing causes the advertisement to be as brief as possible. It is then written on the same principle as the telegram, that is, using the fewest words possible to express clearly a given amount of information.
Exercise 90.—Write, after studying similar advertisements in the newspapers, advertisements for help of all kinds,—janitor, sewing girls, errand boys, maids, nurses, coachmen, farm hands, apple-pickers, telephone girls, stenographers, etc. ”

“ I use no figure of speech when I say that we may now buy our books in bulk. I saw, only this morning, the advertisement of a large dry goods “emporium” (’tis laces and literature now) wherein is announced for sale the bound volumes of a popular magazine. “Over eight pounds of the choicest reading, bound in the usual style—olive green.” ”

“ To catch the eye is the first essential of a good advertisement; the first sense to which it appeals is that of sight. The object of the skilful advertiser is to make the space he occupies—whether a page or a portion of a page—the most conspicuous in the publication. Turn for a moment to any page of [Pg 233] advertisements you please, open and shut it quickly, and you will generally find that there is one advertisement which has immediately attracted your eye. ”

“ When you respond to an advertisement offering a booklet or a sample free, you are pestered by the proprietor of the commodity advertised with numerous communications importuning your custom, until in sheer self-defence you make a purchase. Now I had occasion to answer an announcement advertising for the services of a person with attainments approximating to my own, decided that, in the event of my application attracting no response, I would adopt the methods indicated above. ”

“ One reason for this is that the advertisements in an American magazine are printed on as good paper, and printed with as great care, as any other part of the contents. There are probably very few among American magazine readers who do not habitually look through the advertising pages, with the certainty that they will be entertained by the beauty of the advertiser’s illustrations and the quaint curtness of his phrases. ”

“ In the five examples of effective advertising selected from newspapers or magazines, set down the questions that are answered in the matter following the attention lines. III. Coherence in Advertising
An effective advertisement must be a logically developed argument leading from the attraction of attention to the point where the reader is convinced that he wants your goods, and beyond that to the point where he will take some definite physical action to get them. ”

“ Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land,—it largely increases the product. Thousands of persons may be reading your advertisement while you are eating, or sleeping, or attending to your business ”

“ Advertisements are cut from magazines and each advertisement is divided by irregular cuts into two halves. One half is placed in the pile to be distributed among the men; the other half to be distributed among the ladies. These halved advertisements are distributed among the guests and the men seek their partners by finding the other half of the magazine advertisement matching their own. ”

“ In the main, however, it is the advertiser who seeks the reader, not the reader who seeks the advertiser, and the care with which advertisements are prepared, and the certainty with which the success or failure of a trader may be traced to his skill or want of skill as an advertiser, show that the proper use of advertising is one of the most indispensable branches of commercial training. ”

“ In ordinary competitive business, as, e.g., merchandising, advertisement is a means of competitive selling, and is justified by the increased profits that come to the successful advertiser from the increased traffic; and on the like grounds a painstaking conformity to conventional usage, in appearances and expenditure, is there wisely cultivated with the same end in view. ”

“ That day we put a bigger advertisement in the [70] Daily Globe, for the coming show was to be our last one in Tutter until we had returned from our out-of-town trip. When the advertising bill had been paid, I sort of balanced my accounts, if that is the way to express it. Here is the way my figures looked on paper:
That afternoon we started the engine and turned on the organ to let the townsfolk know that we were still on the job. ”

“ Suppose an advertisement of an inch is placed in a list of publications by a watch dealer, a picture dealer, a medical advertiser, a novelty man and an agents’ supply house. There will be quite a striking difference in the ratio of results in each instance. A paper that pays one may not pay the other. We have seen this demonstrated so many times that we know whereof we speak.
Advertising Axioms.
“Virtue increases under a weight or burden” and results increase with a comprehensive expenditure of money in good advertising mediums. ”

“ The gradual growth of markets and their development into periodical fairs, to which merchants from distant places resorted, afforded, until printing was invented, the only means of extended advertisement. ”

“ Another observation I have made is, that extensive advertising is likely to result in a desire for the exaggeration of facts—at all events, so far as the individual advertisers themselves are concerned. That any firm, tradesmen, manufacturers, agents, quacks, perfumers, patentees, or whatever they may be, pay a settled annual sum, no more and no less, for advertising, I do not believe now, whatever I may have done before commencing my inquiries.
I have endeavoured as much as possible, and wherever practicable, to make the advertisements tell their own story. ”

“ If it prove to be so your establishment will get an advertisement for nothing.'
"'We shall be glad to get it,' said the manager. 'A good word from you gentlemen of the press is always acceptable. I dare say you notice we advertise in your paper. ”

“ Every book and magazine contains many advertisements; sometimes fully half of a big magazine is covered with notices or pictures of articles for sale. Wherever you go the inevitable poster confronts you; and even when you look out of the window of the train you see large sign-boards announcing some article of trade. The newer the brand the bigger the picture. If when you get into a street-car you look around you will see nothing but advertisements of all kinds and sorts, and if you answer an advertisement you will keep on receiving notices of the matter about which you inquired. ”

“ Tracks to Wealth.—The inventor who can produce a scheme to cause the customer to become his unconscious advertiser has found the very highroad to success. Such a scheme might be a word in raised letters on the heel of a shoe. Thousands, especially in country towns where there are no sidewalks, would constantly be leaving impressions in the mud, and people would be astonished to find advertisements stamped on the very earth. ”

“ Any article, device or machine can be sold directly to the people through the medium of cleverly displayed [173] advertisements placed in the right publications. When you get ready for an advertising campaign write to any advertising agent—and he also advertises—telling him what it is you have to sell and he will send you a list of the periodicals which will reach the class of folks who will be interested in your commodity and also quote you advertising rates. ”

“ Place the advertisement before the public at the proper time, just when people are beginning to feel the need of such as the article advertised, as furs, when winter sets in. An advertisement may, however, profitably be kept before the public constantly, and increased or diminished as occasion requires. ”

“ The particular position of the advertisement also deserves our psychological interest. The magazines receive higher prices for the cover pages and the newspapers for advertisements which are surrounded by reading matter. ”

“ Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is, therefore, become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick.
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. ”

“ The other general class of advertisement, very commonly used by municipal corporations, is much longer and more elaborate, giving a condensed statement of the character of the work to be done, the conditions under which proposals are invited and will be received, and a schedule of the quantities of work involved, together 8with other particulars. ”

“ All this time advertising was a growing art, and advertisements were beginning to make themselves manifest as the main support and chief source of profit of newspapers, as well as the most natural channel of communication between the buyers and sellers, the needing and supplying members of a vast community. ”

“ This paper will have, of course, many pages of business advertisements, and these will usually be well worth looking through, for the more intelligent editors of the days to come will edit this department just like any other, and classify their advertisements in a descending scale of freshness and interest that will also be an ascending scale of price. The advertiser who wants to be an indecent bore, and vociferate for the ten millionth time some flatulent falsehood about a pill, for instance, will pay at nuisance rates. ”

“ The advertising matter published in the newspapers is largely of local character, while that published in our high class monthly magazines and weeklies, in trade journals, etc., is largely general in character. The advertisements published by the former are chiefly those of local merchants and manufacturers and of local, commercial, financial and other interests. On the other hand the advertisements carried by the class of monthly and weekly periodicals indicated represent persons, companies and interests widely scattered throughout the country. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to point out to men of business the advantage of using The Little Times as an advertising medium.
“No quack or immoral advertisements will be admitted into its columns—the Publisher reserving to himself the right to decide as to their character. ”

“ The orders of the most impressionable part of the public who have been reading their advertisements and the orders of those to whom the naming and requiring of advertised products is the most ready and natural thing, are yet to come in or, at best, are just beginning to come. ”

“ The advertisements in vernacular languages that one meets with, circulated and posted up in all sorts of places, tell the same tale convincingly; for the advertiser knows his business, and will not angle where no fish rise. ”

“ There must now and again be a great run upon that edition of “Joe Miller” the proprietor keeps in his room, when the “exchanges” refuse to give out new or second-hand humorous paragraphs. We will conclude this section of our cousins’ peculiarities with the following, picked out from a Boston sheet, where it was nestled close by the biggest of the advertisements:—
Keep on Advertising.
Don’t fear to have a small advertisement by the side of a larger competing one. The big one can’t eat it up. ”

“ This shows that in monthly magazines the receipts from advertising and subscriptions are about the same. In weeklies the receipts from advertising are often four times as much as the receipts from sales and subscriptions, while in the dailies the proportion is even greater. The owner of one of the leading evening papers in New York told me that 90 per cent of its total receipts came from advertising. From whatever standpoint you approach the subject, it is the advertisements that are becoming the most important factor in publishing. ”