The Poster: An Illustrated Monthly Chronicle, Vol. 5, Nos. 26-29 (September to December 1900)
A bound volume of four monthly numbers of The Poster, September to December 1900, published from 9 Fleet Street by Hugh MacLeay and bound with its trade supplement, Modern Advertising.
What it is
A bound volume of four monthly numbers of The Poster, September to December 1900, published from 9 Fleet Street by Hugh MacLeay and bound with its trade supplement, Modern Advertising. Two years after the first volume, the paper has moved from poster collecting toward advertising practice. The magazine carries Charles Hiatt's Paris Exhibition notes, features on H. G. Ibels, Frank Nankivell and the cabarets of Montmartre, a serial on collecting Kemble and Kean playbills, a Hoardings column on the Strand site taken by Quaker Oats, an exposé of copied designs titled The Gentle Art of Cribbing, and H. R. Woestyn's essay on sequel posters. The supplement speaks to publishers and advertisers: show cards, mail order, Christmas magazine advertising and the campaign against billboards that deface scenery. The volume closes with the results of four prize design competitions and the judges' reasons for rejecting entries.
Why read it now
Several arguments here have held up. The Postal Business article says the first order rarely pays for the advertising and repeat orders carry the profit, which is the customer lifetime value logic direct marketers still work by. Woestyn's sequel-poster essay weighs the advertiser's 'monotonous advertisement' against the artist's wish for new designs. Modern research on distinctive brand assets mostly sides with the advertiser, since consistency builds memory, and a sequel is the middle path: fresh execution, same recognisable elements. The judges' notes, that designs must survive the cost of reproduction and avoid meaningless detail and badly drawn lettering, still work as a creative checklist. The Hoardings column's advice to block several copies of one poster together is an early statement of share of visibility. What has dated: the Victorian taste debates, the mail-order mechanics, and the belief that repetition always ends in a sale, which nothing here measures. Use: when a campaign creative tires, brief a sequel that keeps the character, colours and layout and changes only the situation.
Passages worth keeping
The secret of a good mail order business is to be able to make a customer always a customer.
نجاح البيع بالبريد يقوم على الاحتفاظ بالعميل، لا على صفقته الأولى.
Therefore, we continue in our policy of monotonous advertisement, exhibiting the same mural picture for months, if need be.
يرد المعلن على من ملّ ملصقه بأن التكرار هو ما جعل الناس يعرفون بضاعته، لذلك يبقيه شهورًا.
No, Mr. Publisher, what the advertiser wants is the proper printing of his advertisements
المعلن لا يشتري أرقام التوزيع وحدها، بل يريد أن يظهر إعلانه مطبوعًا طباعة جيدة.
Of these, only a few combined artistic merit with the qualities necessary to an effective advertisement.
من بين 41 تصميمًا، قلة فقط جمعت بين الجودة الفنية وما يحتاجه الإعلان كي يؤدي عمله.
Others were put aside by reason of superfluity of meaningless detail.
رُفضت تصاميم أخرى لأنها امتلأت بتفاصيل زائدة لا تخدم الرسالة.
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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