Making Advertisements and Making Them Pay
A 1920 book from Charles Scribner's Sons by Roy S. Durstine, a founding partner of the agency Barton, Durstine & Osborn, written to show newcomers that advertising is more than "stringing sentences together and finding somebody to draw a picture." It opens with Brown the pickle maker deciding that word of mouth is too slow, then runs through twelve short chapters named for qualities: Atmosphere, Sincerity, Common Sense, The Right Word in the Right Place.
What it is
A 1920 book from Charles Scribner's Sons by Roy S. Durstine, a founding partner of the agency Barton, Durstine & Osborn, written to show newcomers that advertising is more than "stringing sentences together and finding somebody to draw a picture." It opens with Brown the pickle maker deciding that word of mouth is too slow, then runs through twelve short chapters named for qualities: Atmosphere, Sincerity, Common Sense, The Right Word in the Right Place. Each chapter carries full-page reproductions of real advertisements with one line of comment, among them New Jersey Zinc by Calkins & Holden, Ovington's gift shop, Butterick's trade ads mocking data worship, and Bruce Barton's Cornell endowment campaign. Its main claims: the picture must tell the story, not decorate; copy should sound like the firm, not the writer; sincerity outweighs polish; and advertising wastes money when the goods are not in the shops.
Why read it now
Several of Durstine's points hold. His attack on "rubber-stampism", ads so alike you could swap the signature, matches later work on distinctive brand assets: an ad nobody can tie to its brand is paid for by one firm and credited to another. His merchandising chapter, that national advertising is waste if the product is not on the shelf, is what Ehrenberg-Bass researchers now call physical availability, one of the two main drivers of brand growth. The Butterick line he reprints, make worthy goods and tell many people for many years, sits close to the modern case for broad, continuous reach over short bursts. He also describes field researchers kept blind to the client's brand so they cannot steer dealers' answers, a sound method still. What has dated: his belief that readers can sense a writer's sincerity is untested, and his worry that print cannot pick its reader has been replaced by targeting, which brings its own waste. Use: cover the logo on your last five ads and a competitor's; if a stranger cannot tell them apart, fix that before touching the offer.
Passages worth keeping
Advertising came into the world because men were too impatient to wait for Mrs. Jones to tell Mrs. Smith that Brown's pickles were good to eat.
الإعلان وُلد من نفاد الصبر، فالتاجر لا يريد أن ينتظر حتى تنتقل سمعة بضاعته من جار إلى جار، فيخبر الناس بنفسه.
Possibly the best rule to follow in an illustration is to be sure that it tells a story. If the explanation can be thrown away it is a mighty good picture.
الصورة الجيدة في الإعلان تروي القصة وحدها، فإذا أمكن حذف الشرح المكتوب تحتها دون أن يضيع المعنى فهي صورة ناجحة.
If there is one quality that least can be spared from copy it is sincerity.
أهم صفة في النص الإعلاني هي الصدق، ويمكن الاستغناء عن كل شيء آخر قبله.
An advertisement should look and sound like the firm which signs it; not like the man who writes it.
الإعلان يجب أن يحمل شخصية الشركة التي توقّعه، لا أسلوب الكاتب الذي صاغه.
For, after all, the elements of advertising success are very simple and very hard. Make worthy goods, put your name on them and tell many people about them continually for many years.
أسس النجاح في الإعلان بسيطة لكنها صعبة التطبيق، وهي أن تصنع سلعة جيدة، وتضع اسمك عليها، وتخبر بها عددًا كبيرًا من الناس باستمرار لسنوات طويلة.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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