The clock that had no hands, and nineteen other essays about advertising

How to Write Retail Advertising Copy

A skilled layer of mosaics works with small fragments of stone—they fit into more places than the larger chunks.

The skilled advertiser works with small words—they fit into more minds than big phrases.

The simpler the language the greater certainty that it will be understood by the least intelligent reader.

The construction engineer plans his road-bed where there is a minimum of grade—he works along the lines of least resistance.

The advertisement which runs into mountainous style is badly surveyed—all minds are not built for high grade thinking.

Advertising must be simple. When it is tricked out with the jewelry and silks of literary expression, it looks as much out of place as a ball dress at the breakfast table!

The buying public is only interested in facts. People read advertisements to find out what you have to sell.

The advertiser who can fire the most facts in the shortest time gets the most returns. Blank cartridges make noise but they do not hit—blank talk, however clever, is only wasted space.

You force your salesmen to keep to solid facts—you don't allow them to sell muslin with quotations from Omar or trousers with excerpts from Marie Corelli. You must not tolerate in your printed selling talk anything that you are not willing to countenance in personal salesmanship.

Cut out clever phrases if they are inserted to the sacrifice of clear explanations—write copy as you talk. Only be more brief. Publicity is costlier than conversation—ranging in price downward from $10 a line; talk is not cheap but the most expensive commodity in the world.

Sketch in your ad to the stenographer. Then you will be so busy “saying it” that you will not have time to bother about the gewgaws of writing. Afterwards take the typewritten manuscript and cut out every word and every line that can be erased without omitting an important detail. What remains in the end is all that really counted in the beginning.

Cultivate brevity and simplicity. “Savon Français” may look smarter, but more people will understand “French Soap.” Sir Isaac Newton's explanation of gravitation covers six pages but the schoolboy's terse and homely “What goes up must come down” clinches the whole thing in six words.

Indefinite talk wastes space. It is not 100% productive. The copy that omits prices sacrifices half its pulling power—it has a tendency to bring lookers instead of buyers. It often creates false impressions. Some people are bound to conceive the idea that the goods are higher priced than in reality—others, by the same token, are just as likely to infer that the prices are lower and go away thinking that you have exaggerated your statements.

The reader must be searched out by the copy. Big space is cheapest because it doesn't waste a single eye. Publicity must be on the offensive. There are far too many advertisers who keep their lights on top of their bushel—the average citizen hasn't time to overturn your bushel.

Small space is expensive. Like a one-flake snowstorm, there is not enough of it to lay.

Space is a comparative matter after all. It is not a case of how much is used as how it is used. The passengers on the limited express may realize that Jones has tacked a twelve-inch shingle on every post and fence for a stretch of five miles, but they are going too fast to make out what the shingles say, yet the two feet letters of Brown's big bulletin board on top of the hill leap at them before they have a chance to dodge it. And at that it doesn't cost nearly so much as the sum total of Jones' dinky display.

Just so advertisements attractively displayed every day or every other day for a year in one big newspaper, will find the eye of all readers, no matter how rapidly they may be “going” through the advertising pages and produce more results than a dozen piking pieces of copy scattered through half a dozen dailies.

The Difference between Amusing and Convincing

An advertiser must realize that there is a vast difference between amusing people and convincing them. It does not pay to be “smart” at the line rate of the average first class daily. I suppose that I could draw the attention of everybody on the street by painting half of my face red and donning a suit of motley. I might have a sincere purpose in wishing to attract the crowd, but I would be deluding myself if I mistook the nature of their attention.

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.

The Cellar Hole and the Sewer Hole

A coal cart stopped before an office building in Washington and the driver dismounted, removed the cover from a manhole, ran out his chute, and proceeded to empty the load. An old negro strolled over and stood watching him. Suddenly the black man glanced down and immediately burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, which continued for several minutes. The cart driver looked at him in amusement. “Say, Uncle,” he asked, “do you always laugh when you see coal going into a cellar?” The negro sputtered around for a few moments and then holding his hands to his aching sides managed to say, “No, sah, but I jest busts when I sees it goin' down a sewer.”

The advertiser who displays lack of judgment in selecting the newspapers which carry his copy often confuses the sewer and the cellar.

All the money that is put into newspapers isn't taken out again, by any means. The fact that all dailies possess a certain physical likeness, doesn't necessarily signify a similarity in character, and it's character in a newspaper that brings returns. The editor who conducts a journalistic sewer, finds a different class of readers than the publisher who respects himself enough to respect his readers.

What goes into a newspaper largely determines the class of homes into which the newspaper goes. An irresponsible, scandal-mongering, muck-raking sheet is certainly not supported by the buying classes of people. It may be perused by thousands of readers, but such readers are seldom purchasers of advertised goods.

It's the clean-cut, steady, normal-minded citizens who form the bone and sinew and muscle of the community. It's the sane, self-respecting, dependable newspaper that enters their homes and it's the home sale that indicates the strength of an advertising medium.

No clean-minded father of a family wishes to have his wife and children brought in contact with the most maudlin and banal phases of life. He defends them from the sensational editor and the unpleasant advertiser. He subscribes to a newspaper which he does not fear to leave about the house.

Therefore, the respectable newspaper can always be counted upon to produce more sales than one which may even own a larger circulation but whose distribution is in ten editions among unprofitable citizens.

You can no more expect to sell goods to people who haven't money, than you can hope to pluck oysters from rose-bushes.

It isn't the number of readers reached, but the number of readers whose purses can be reached, that constitutes the value of circulation. It's one thing to arouse their attention, but it's a far different thing to get their money. The mind may be willing, but the pocketbook may be weak.

If you had the choice of a thousand acres of desert land or a hundred acres of oasis, you'd select the fertile spot, realizing that the larger tract had less value because it would be less productive.

The advertiser who really understands how he is spending his money, takes care that he is not pouring his money into deserts and sewers.

The Neighborhood of Your Advertising

The Neighborhood

Circulation is a commodity which must be bought with the same common sense used in selecting potatoes, cloth and real estate. It can be measured and weighed—it is merchandise with a provable value. It varies just as much as the grocer's green stuff, the tailor's fabrics and the lots of the real estate man.

Your cook refuses to accept green and rotten tomatoes at the price of perfect ones. She does not calculate the number of vegetables that are delivered to her, but those that she can use. When your wife selects a piece of cloth she first makes sure that it will serve the purpose she has in view. When you buy a piece of property you consider the neighborhood as well as the ground. Just so when you buy advertising you must find out how much of the circulation you can use. You must judge the neighborhoods where your copy will be read, with the same thoughtfulness that you devoted to selecting the spot where your goods are sold.

A dealer in precious stones would be foolish to open up in a tenement district, and equally short-sighted, to tell about his jewelry in a newspaper largely distributed there. Out of ten thousand men and women who might see what he had to say not ten of them could afford to buy his goods. These ten thousand readers would be mass without muscle. He could make them willing to do business with him, but their incomes wouldn't let them become customers.

One of the greatest mistakes in publicity is to drop your lines where the fish can't take your bait.

Circulation is, as you see, a very interesting subject, but very few people know anything about it. It would surprise you to know that this ignorance often extends to the business offices of newspapers. I have known publishers to continually mistake the class of their readers and have met hundreds of them who had the most fantastic ideas upon the figures of their circulation.

While I would not be so harsh as to accuse them of anything more than being mistaken, none the less their tendency to infect others with this misinformation renders it extremely advisable for you to become a member of the Missouri society—and “be shown.”

Don't rely solely on circulation statements. You don't understand the tricks in their making. Make the newspaper which carries your advertisement show you the list of its advertisers. A newspaper which prints the most advertising, month after month, year after year, is always the best medium. This is equally true in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Kenosha and Walla Walla.

The Mistake of the Big Steak

Watch out for waste in circulation. Find out where your story is going to be read. Don't pay for planting the seed of publicity in a spot where you are not going to harvest the results.

The manufacturer of soap who has his goods on sale from Oskaloosa to Timbuctoo doesn't care how widely a newspaper circulation is scattered. Whoever reads about his product is near to some store or other where it is sold—but you have just one store.

Buying advertising circulation is very much like ordering a steak—if the waiter brings you a porter-house twice as big as your digestion can handle, you've paid twice as much as the steak was worth to you, even if it is worth the price to the restaurant man.

You derive your profit not from the circulation that your advertisement gets, but from circulation that gets people to buy.

If two newspapers offer you their columns and one shows a distribution almost entirely within the city and in towns that rely upon your city for buying facilities, your business can digest all of its influence. If the other has as much circulation, but only one third of it is in local territory, mere bulk cannot establish its value to you—it's another case of the big steak—you pay for more than you can digest. That part of its influence which is concentrated where men and women can't get your goods after you get their attention, is sheer waste.

By dividing the number of copies he prints into his line rate, a publisher may fallaciously demonstrate to you that his space is sold as low as that of his stronger competitors, but if half his circulation is too far away to bring buyers, his real rate is double what it seems. He is like the butcher who weighs in all the bone and sinew and fat and charges you as much for the waste as he does for the meat.

The Omelette Soufflé

There is a vast distinction between distribution for the sake of increasing the circulation figures and distribution for the sake of increasing the number of advertising responses.

There is a difference between a circulation which strikes the same reader several times in the same day and the circulation which does not repeat the individual. There is a difference between circulation which is concentrated into an area from which every reader can be expected to come to your establishment, if you can interest him, and a circulation that spreads over half a dozen states and shows its greatest volume in territory so far from your establishment that you can't get a buyer out of ten thousand readers.

You've got to weigh and measure all these things when you weigh and measure circulation figures. It isn't the number of copies printed, but the number of copies sold—not the number of papers distributed, but the number of papers distributed in responsive territory—not the number of readers reached, but the number of readers who have the price to buy what you want to sell—that determine the value of circulation to you.

You can take a single egg and whip it into an omelette soufflé which seems to be a whole plateful, but the extra bulk is just hot air and sugar—the change in form has not increased the amount of egg substance and it's the substance in circulation, just as it is the nutrition in the egg, that counts.

The clock that had no hands, and nineteen other essays about advertising

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