Advertise: How? When? Where?
A short London guide of 1863 by William Smith, acting manager of the Adelphi Theatre, with drawings by William McConnell and J. H. Swan.
What it is
A short London guide of 1863 by William Smith, acting manager of the Adelphi Theatre, with drawings by William McConnell and J. H. Swan. Smith splits it, like a play, into three parts. How to Advertise walks through the trades one by one, from railways and insurance offices to barbers and undertakers, and gives each a practical tip: timetables with main lines and branches in separate columns, headed and classified newspaper columns, brewers' cards naming the days they call on each district. When to Advertise argues for matching the message to the season, mocking a maker who pushed patent water filters as Christmas presents, and quotes Barnum on spending too little. Where to Advertise covers bill-posting, sandwich men, pavement ads and shop fronts, and sets a wall of messy posters against neat boards of one size. Real advertisements for theatres, dentists and watchmakers bracket the text.
Why read it now
Three ideas still hold. Timing is part of the message: the filter-at-Christmas joke is the plain version of seasonal and occasion-based media buying. Clarity is a form of advertising: his fixes for confusing timetables and unsorted newspaper columns are early user-experience thinking. And the Barnum line he quotes, that advertising done sparingly fails, fits Ehrenberg-Bass studies of brands that go dark and lose sales, and Binet and Field's IPA finding that share of voice drives share growth. Where he is weaker: he praises a firm that sends 8000 circulars in one November week and nothing else all year, which research on continuous presence does not support, and his line that novelty is the order of the day pulls against evidence that consistent, distinctive assets build memory better than constant change. His own story of the old glove shop still burning oil lamps, known because it never changed, makes the better case. The sandwich men and stamp duty are period color. Use: before a Ramadan or back-to-school push, list what your category should not say in that season, then plan a lighter presence for the months between peaks.
Passages worth keeping
Novelty is the order of the day.
يرى المؤلف أن الجمهور يطلب الجديد دائمًا، وأن طرق النشر القديمة لم تعد تكفي في عصر الاختراعات.
Midsummer is not the best time of year to advertise skates or winter clothing, nor should I recommend a large outlay in December on the announcement of cheap excursions to the Highlands.
لكل سلعة موسمها؛ فلا تنفق على إعلان ملابس الشتاء في الصيف، ولا على رحلات المصايف في عز الشتاء.
Men in business will sometimes tell you that they have tried advertising, and that it did not pay. This is only when advertising is done sparingly and grudgingly
من يقول إن الإعلان لم ينفعه جرّبه غالبًا بكميات قليلة وبنفس مترددة، والجرعة الناقصة لا تعطي نتيجة.
Where it can be done, have painted boards with neat mouldings and in bright colours; get them of as near one size as possible.
الترتيب في عرض الإعلانات يمنحها هيبة ويجذب عددًا أكبر من المارة، فوحّد المقاسات واجعل الألواح أنيقة.
no trade or calling at the present time can afford NOT TO ADVERTISE.
خلاصة الكتاب أن أي تجارة أو مهنة في هذا العصر لا تستطيع أن تستغني عن الإعلان.
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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