Advertising methods and mediums
The immense importance of advertising was recognized long ago by businessmen of enlightenment, but nevertheless, there were many individuals in the industrial and business world who failed to realize its importance until within the past decade.
It may be stated without the possibility of question that the man who advertises without a comprehension of the laws of advertising is simply wasting good money. In exceptional cases chance may seem to favour the haphazard advertiser for a while; "luck," so-called, may temporarily attend his efforts; but successful advertising worthy of the name can only be accomplished by and through an understanding of well-defined principles of cause and effect.
Modern advertising is a science, like a salesmanship, and just as wise and accurate knowledge is necessary for the acquirement of salesmanship, so is the same quality of knowledge necessary in advertising. We shall deal, in the course of this work, not so much with the letter of scientific advertising as with its spirit.
We shall show the laws which govern the action of ad-advertising and examine the methods by which the scientific advertisers of the present-day construct the advertisements that appeal to the buying public, and we shall analyze these methods so as to discover the principles on which they are based. Recent Growth of Advertising.
Within the last few years, advertising in the United States and Canada has grown to immense proportions. More and more attention yearly is being paid to the subject by businessmen. Advertising was always a feature of business activity, but compared with modern methods those of former years were unquestionably crude
. The average advertisement of even so recent a period as twenty-five years ago would present a decidedly antiquated appearance if published in the pages of a modern magazine. Few people realize. in how many different directions human progress has been evinced in a remarkable degree in the last quarter of a century.
The closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening decade of the twentieth have been crowded with a bewildering sequence of important discoveries in the arts and sciences. These have been accompanied by many changes in the methods of doing business, among which the decided progress made in advertising has passed comparatively unnoticed except by those engaged in the advertising profession and businessmen of the wideawake sort.
Advertising of Old Ancient methods of advertising, which will be described later on, included the use of the town crier and of crude displays of produce and manufactured goods. These early attempts were the outgrowth of the merchant's natural desire for an extension of his trade. Nowadays the manufacturer is widely separated from 'the consumer. It becomes necessary for him, therefore, to create new markets, to cultivate new territory, to interest new customers — and in the furtherance of these objects, advertising is successfully employed.
The former displays in the marketplace, crude as they were, have their modern counterpart in the elaborately trimmed show windows, or the expensive exhibits at a state fair or national exposition. Before the days of the printing press, the display in the marketplace was perhaps the only form of advertising within the reach of the merchant, and so he did what he could to extend his trade by the means at hand. He had the spirit of the modern advertiser but lacked facilities for its expression. Printed Advertising.
With the advent of movable types and the development of the art of printing, the character of commercial advertising began to undergo a change.
