Part 7

The new advertiser is especially prone to misjudge between amusing and convincing copy. A humorous picture may catch the eyes of every reader, but it won't pay as well as an illustration of some piece of merchandise which will strike the eye of every buyer. Merchants secure varying results from the same advertising space. The publisher delivers to each the same quality of readers, but the advertiser who plants flippancy in the minds of the community won't attain the benefit that is secured by the merchant who imprints clinching arguments there.

Always remember that the advertising sections of newspapers are no different than farming lands. And it is as preposterous to hold the publisher responsible for the outcome of unintelligent copy as it would be unjust to blame the soil for bad seed and poor culture. Every advertiser gets exactly the same number of readers from a publisher and the same readers--after that it's up to him--the results fluctuate in accordance with the intelligence and the pulling power of the copy which is inserted.

Some Don'ts when You Do Advertise

The price of the gun never hits the bull's eye. And the bang seldom rattles the bells. It's the hand on the trigger that cuts the real figger. The aim's what amounts--that's what makes record counts-- Are you hitting or just wasting shells?

Don't forget that the man who writes your copy is the man who aims your policy.

When you stop to reflect what your space costs and that the wrong talk is just noise--bang without biff--you must see the necessity and sanity of putting the right man behind the gun.

Don't tolerate an ambition on your ad-man's part to indulge in a lurking desire to be a literary light.

People read his advertising to discover what your buyers have just brought from the market and what you are asking for "O. N. T." They buy the newspaper for information and recreation and are satisfied with the degree of poetry and persiflage dished up in its reading columns.

Don't exaggerate. Poetic licenses are not valid in business prose. The American people don't want to be humbugged and the merchant who figures upon too many fools, finds himself looking into a mirror, usually about a half hour after the sheriff has come to look over the premises.

Don't imitate. Advertising is a special measure garment. Businesses are not built in ready-made sizes. Copy which fits somebody else's selling plans, won't fit your store without sagging at the chest or riding up at the collar. Duplicated argument and duplicated results are not twins. Your policy of publicity must be specially measured from your policy of merchandising.

Don't put your advertising in charge of an amateur. Let somebody else stand the expense of his educational blunders. Remember you are making a plea before the bar of public confidence. Your ad-writer is an advocate. Like a bad lawyer, he can lose a good case by not making the most of the facts at hand.

Don't get the "sales" habit. "Sales" are stimulants. When held too often their effect is weakening. The merchant who continually yells "bargain" is like the old hen who was always crying "fox." When the real article did come along, none of her chicks believed it.

Don't use fine print. Make it easy for the reader to find out about your business. There are ten million pairs of eyeglasses worn in America, and every owner of them buys something.

And Don't start unless you mean to stick. The patron saint of the successful advertiser hates a quitter.

The Doctor whose Patients Hang On

Out in China all things are not topsy turvy. Physicians are paid for keeping people well and when their patients fall ill, their weekly remittances are stopped. The Chinese judge a medical man not by the number of years he lives, but by the length of time his patrons survive.

An advertising medium must be judged in the same way. The fact that it has age to its credit isn't so important as the age of its advertising patronage. Whenever a daily continues to display the store talk of the same establishment year after year, it's a pretty sure sign that the merchant has made money out of that newspaper, because no publication can continue to be a losing investment to its customers over a stretch of time, without the fact being discovered. And when a newspaper is not only able to boast of an honor roll of stores that have continued to appear in its pages for a stretch of decades, but at the same time demonstrates that it carries more business than its competitors, it has proven its superiority as plainly as a mountain peak which rises above its fellows.

The combination of stability and progress is the strongest virtue that a newspaper can possess. Only the fit survive--reputation is a difficult thing to get and a harder thing to hold--it takes merit to earn it and character to maintain it. There is a vast difference between fame and notoriety, and just as much difference between a famous newspaper and a notorious one.

Just as a manufacturer is always eager to install his choicest stocks in a store which has earned the respect of the community, just so a retailer should be anxious to insert his name in a newspaper which has earned the respect of its readers. The manufacturer feels that he will receive a square deal from a store which has age to its credit. He can expect as much from a newspaper which is a credit to its age!

The newspaper which outlives the rest does so because it was best fitted to--it had to earn the confidence of its readers--and keep it. It had to be a better newspaper than any other and better newspapers go to the homes of better buyers. Every bit of its circulation has the element of quality and staying power. And it is the respectable, home-loving element of every community--not the touts and the gamblers--toward which the merchant must look for his business vertebrae--he cannot find buyers unless he uses the newspaper that enters their homes. And when he does enter their homes he must not confuse the sheet that comes in the back gate with the newspaper that is delivered at the front door.

The Horse that Drew the Load

A moving van came rolling down the street the other day with a big spirited Percheron in the center and two wretched nags on either side. The Percheron was doing all the work, and it seemed that he would have got along far better in single harness, than he managed with his inferior mates retarding his speed.

The advertiser who selects a group of newspapers usually harnesses two lame propositions to every pulling newspaper on his list, and just as the van driver probably dealt out an equal portion of feed to each of his animals, just so many a merchant is paying practically the same rate to a weak daily, that he is allowing the sturdy profitable sheet.

Unfortunately the accepted custom of inserting the same advertisement in every paper acts to the distinct disadvantage of the meritorious medium. The advertiser charges the sum total of his expense against the sum total of his returns, and thereby does himself and the best puller an injustice, by crediting the less productive sheets with results that they have not earned.

It's the pulling power of the newspaper as well as the horse that proves its value, and if advertisers were as level headed as they should be, they would take the trouble to put every daily in which they advertise on trial for at least a month and advertise a different department or article in each, carefully tabulating the returns. If this were done, fifty per cent of the advertising now carried in weaker newspapers would be withdrawn and the patronage of the stronger sheets would advance in that proportion.

There are newspapers in many a city that are, single handed, able to build up businesses. Their circulation is solid muscle and sinew--all pull. It isn't the number of copies printed but the number of copies that reach the hands of buyers--it isn't the number of readers but the number of readers with money to spend--it isn't the bulk of a circulation but the amount of the circulation which is available to the advertiser--it isn't fat but brawn--that tell in the long run.

There are certain earmarks that indicate these strengths and weaknesses. They are as plain to the observing eye as the signs of the woods are significant to the trapper. The news columns tell you what you can expect out of the advertising columns. A newspaper always finds the class of readers to which it is edited. When its mental tone is low and its moral tone is careless depend upon it--the readers match the medium.

No gun can hit a target outside of its range. No newspaper can aim its policy in one direction and score in another. No advertiser can find a different class of men and women than the publisher has found for himself. He is judged by the company he keeps. If he lies down with dogs he will arise with fleas.