Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 152, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1910 — TALKS ON ADVERTISING [ARTICLE]

TALKS ON ADVERTISING

A newspaper has 5,000 readers for each 1,0,00 subscribers, says the Albion, Mich., Recorder. A merchant who puts out 1,000 hand-bills gets possibly 300 or 400 people to read — that is, if the boy who is trusted to distribute them does not chuck them under the sidewalk. The hand-bills cost as much as a half column advertisement in the home paper. All the women and girls and half the men and boys read the advertisements. Result: The merchant who uses the newspaper has 3,500 more readers to each 1,000 of the paper’s readers. There is no estimating the amount of business that advertising does bring to a merchant, but each dollar brings somewhere from S2O to SIOO worth of business. When a man is caught in one exaggeration will have a pretty hard frime trying to convince the world that all he says it not colored by exaggeration. The first exaggeration may have been innocent enough. It may do no harm. But, leaving out all moral considerations, exaggeration and untruthfulness in advertising are mighty bad business. They serve well enough until the truth Is found out; then, as the old adage has it: “Truth i 3 mighty and will prevail.” The exaggerator must be on the strain continually to exceed his last exaggeration. He will have to appeal each time to a new set of customers. This it is imposible to do continuously among any one class of people. The old proverb may be true that “there is a sucker born every minute.” But it Is very dangerous to attempt to found a stable business supon such a foundation of sand. We wonder if our home merchants ever stop to think why the big mail order houses are so successful. Their success lies in their continual advertising of their goods, says the Hunkville (Mo.) Herald. They never stop advertising because of changes of season or for any other reason. The country newspapers have been fighting these mail order house hard for years for the benefit of the home merchant, and some of the merchants appreciate this and some of them do not. If the mail order houses would practice advertising by “spurts,” in certain seasons of the year, like some country merchants, they would soon go out of business While the local or home merchant keeps his business “under a bushel,” so to speak, or out of their local paper on account of hot, dry or wet weather, or bad roads, they are giving the mail order houses the advantage of them before the people, for those houses never stop advertising for any kind of weather or for dull times.