The Clothing Book
A 508-page trade book issued by the Charles Austin Bates Syndicate in New York in 1898 for clothing retailers who wrote their own newspaper ads. About 25 pages of instruction come first.
What it is
A 508-page trade book issued by the Charles Austin Bates Syndicate in New York in 1898 for clothing retailers who wrote their own newspaper ads. About 25 pages of instruction come first. Bates says the best advertising is done inside the store, because the aim is repeat sales, and clerks who ignore visitors undo the ad. He tells clothiers to spend 1.5 to 2 per cent of sales, 3 to 5 when business lags, and to advertise most when business is weakest; to mail a seasonal circular to every past buyer and put a booklet in every package; to write each ad as a talk to a customer about one item and its price; and to offer money back without argument. The rest is hundreds of numbered ready-made ads and cuts to order by number, catch-lines from other stores, and blank forms for daily sales against advertising.
Why read it now
The instruction pages hold up better than the ads. Several claims match later evidence. The store must keep the ad's promise, or the ad only speeds up the loss of a customer. A package insert reaches the buyer at the moment of satisfaction, as in-box cards still do. Studies of lenient return policies find they lift purchases more than they raise returns. Firms that kept advertising through recessions have tended to gain share. His test, "would I say this to a customer inside my store", is still a sound copy edit. What has dated: the claim that attention is overrated, which fails in a scrolling feed where the first seconds decide; the rule never to mention a competitor; the view that women buy men's clothes; and the "sacrifice" pricing he explains, since was-and-now claims now need a genuine prior price and, in Saudi Arabia, a Ministry of Commerce discount permit. Many of the ready-made ads also break his own rules, with vague lines and a blank where the price goes. Use: keep his daily sheet of sales against ad spend, split by channel, and read it every month.
Passages worth keeping
the purpose of advertising is to sell goods, not once only, but to the same customer over and over again.
الإعلان لا ينجح بإدخال الناس إلى المتجر مرة واحدة، بل بأن يعود الزبون نفسه ويشتري مرات كثيرة.
the time to advertise most is when you need more business most.
حين يضعف البيع لا توقف الإعلان، بل زِده، فهذا هو الوقت الذي تحتاج فيه إلى زبائن جدد.
An advertisement that costs $200 and shows $250 in net profits is cheap. An advertisement that costs a dollar and shows no results at all is exceedingly dear.
رخص الإعلان أو غلاؤه يقاس بما يعيده من ربح، لا بثمنه، فالإعلان الزهيد الذي لا يبيع هو الأغلى.
Most people skip all the preliminaries of an ad and go straight down to the bottom where the facts and prices are.
القارئ يتجاوز المقدمات والمديح ويبحث مباشرة عن المعلومة والسعر، فابدأ بهما.
Would I make this statement in these words to a customer inside my store?
اختبر كل جملة في إعلانك: هل تقولها بهذه الكلمات لزبون يقف أمامك؟ إن لم تكن تقولها فاحذفها.
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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