Ready Made Advertisements
A 184-page book issued in 1901 by George P. Rowell & Co., publishers of Printers' Ink, priced at $1.00, with no compiler named.
What it is
A 184-page book issued in 1901 by George P. Rowell & Co., publishers of Printers' Ink, priced at $1.00, with no compiler named. Nine pages of short chapters give a small merchant a method: pick the one best paper in town and spend nine-tenths of the budget there and the rest on the shop window; buy space by the year; advertise one line of goods at a time; write down everything, cut it, then read it to a friend and ask what is on sale; use two type styles; follow a list of don'ts. The rest is hundreds of retail ads reprinted from Printers' Ink, two columns a page, each under an italic caption such as Good Tomato Talk or Credit Talk That Convinces, for shirts, coal, pianos, eyeglasses, furniture on credit and patent medicines, indexed by trade so a merchant can copy or adapt them.
Why read it now
Read it as an early commercial swipe file, and for its plain retail copy rules, which mostly hold. One product per ad, a reason for every offer, the price stated, the address never left out, and the test of reading a draft to someone and asking what is being sold: modern copy testing agrees that a message the reader cannot restate in seconds has failed. Putting the budget into one strong paper before spreading out matches today's case for reaching enough of the right audience in one channel rather than a little everywhere. The ads teach through specifics: exact prices, stated quantities, and a credit ad that prints its weekly terms, a direct lesson for buy-now-pay-later offers. What has dated: health claims such as a cough syrup that cures and rubber heels said to be recommended by all doctors and scientists, which would breach consumer-protection rules in most markets today, including the Gulf, and the idea that copy can be bought ready-made without knowing the customer. Use: build your own swipe file the same way, one proven ad per card under a caption naming why it works.
Passages worth keeping
Make it a firm resolve in the first year of your business to use only one paper, and that the best paper in your territory.
في السنة الأولى اكتفِ بصحيفة واحدة هي الأقوى في منطقتك، ولا تشتت ميزانيتك الصغيرة.
If a man is told of one thing at a time he will be likely to remember it. If told about six things all in one breath, all six will be quickly forgotten.
إذا عرضت على الناس شيئًا واحدًا تذكروه، وإذا عرضت ستة أشياء دفعة واحدة نسوها كلها.
Next read the advertisement to a friend, and without making any explanations find out what he thinks is offered for sale.
اقرأ الإعلان على صديق دون أي شرح، ثم اسأله ماذا فهم أنك تبيع؛ فإن لم يعرف فالإعلان يحتاج إلى إعادة كتابة.
Don't let anything creep into your ads that is likely to mislead your least intelligent reader.
لا تكتب في إعلانك شيئًا قد يضلل أقل قرائك فهمًا، فالمعيار هو القارئ الأضعف لا الأذكى.
Most stores that promise easy credit never intend to sell as they promise. We publish the exact terms of credit we offer.
متجر يبيع بالتقسيط يكسب الثقة بنشر شروطه كاملة، في مقابل متاجر تعد بسهولة الدفع ولا تفي.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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