Printers' Ink, January 4, 1905 (Vol. 50, No. 1)
The first 1905 issue of Printers' Ink, edited by Charles J. Zingg.
What it is
The first 1905 issue of Printers' Ink, edited by Charles J. Zingg. The cover ad has the Indianapolis Star counting department-store lineage (87,602 agate lines in October 1904) to justify rates above its rivals. The lead is the unsigned "First Paper" of the memoir later published as George P. Rowell's Forty Years an Advertising Agent: a Vermont boyhood, the Caledonian, and Ayer's Cherry Pectoral still sold in the same wrapper. A long report covers Everybody's Magazine, printing 700,000 copies on Thomas W. Lawson's "Frenzied Finance" and raising its price to fifteen cents. The editorial pages rank January magazines by paid lines, put their November ad revenue near $1 million, and criticise long-winded copy. Other items: the journal's own test of a $2 subscription, Rowell & Co.'s plan to pay 281 department stores $1 a mention to name brands in their ads, and George Ethridge's art criticism.
Why read it now
Four items still teach. The department-store scheme is retail media and co-op advertising in 1905: the brand pays per mention in the retailer's own ads, borrows the store's endorsement, gets stock on shelf as a side effect, and receives clippings as proof. The editorial's line between copy "full of meat" and copy that is merely long still holds; Ogilvy and later direct-response testing found long copy sells when every line carries information, and padding does not. Rowell's memory of Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, same colour and same wrapper decades later, is an early case for the distinctive brand assets Jenni Romaniuk describes. National Biscuit dropping a seven-year pun for the food value of a cracker shows the turn toward reason-why copy. What has dated: Ethridge's advice to picture "ladies and gentlemen" because the masses copy the rich is class snobbery, though aspiration still sells; and circulation defined as copies printed, returns included, would fail any audit today. Use: when a retailer sells paid placement, ask for proof of each mention and pay against it.
Passages worth keeping
This wonderful patent medicine is still to be found at drug stores, still has the same color, same wrapper and is still known as Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral.
دواء عرفه الكاتب طفلًا ما زال بعد عقود يباع باللون والغلاف والاسم نفسه، فبقي في الذاكرة.
But the advertisement that is full of meat and the one that is merely long-winded, telling its story clumsily in twice as many words as are needed, are two different matters.
الطول ليس عيبًا في ذاته، والعيب أن يقول الإعلان بضعف الكلمات ما يمكن قوله بنصفها.
After nearly seven years’ steady, costly exploitation of a pun, the National Biscuit Company adopts a new advertising method, telling what constitutes the food value of a soda cracker.
بعد سنوات من الاعتماد على تلاعب لفظي، انتقلت الشركة إلى شرح ما يجعل منتجها مفيدًا غذائيًا.
Your brand advertised by name under the name of a store of high standing, implies the endorsement of that store and secures that store’s whole trade as a possible market.
ظهور اسم العلامة في إعلان متجر معروف يعني أن المتجر يزكيها، ويفتح لها جمهور ذلك المتجر كله.
the masses always copy after the higher classes, and want to do and use the things that people of wealth and refinement do.
يرى الكاتب أن الناس يقلدون الأثرياء، فينصح برسم شخصيات راقية في الإعلان أيًا كان جمهوره.
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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