Printers' Ink, January 5, 1922 (Vol. 118, No. 1)
The first 1922 issue of the New York weekly for advertisers.
What it is
The first 1922 issue of the New York weekly for advertisers. The cover is an N. W. Ayer & Son ad, "Indomitable Durant", noting that dealers contracted for $31,000,000 of Durant cars in 141 working days. Milton S. Florsheim leads with the policies behind his shoe company: dropping private-label work though sales fell from $400,000 to $200,000, advertising continuously in small space, choosing dealers slowly, and cutting prices as costs fall. The editors call Ingersoll's bankruptcy a financing failure, not an advertising one; ads took about 5 per cent of sales. Other pieces: veneer makers using history against the word's cheap image; Roy Dickinson on firms that grew in the 1921 slump, led by Victor; Sunkist's record year on over $800,000 of advertising; A. L. Townsend on curiosity leads; and editorials on selling below cost for volume and on lurid theatre ads inviting censorship.
Why read it now
Florsheim's account holds up. Repeating a few messages in modest space for twenty years is what later work on consistency and mental availability supports, and his line that advertising brings buyers but cannot bring back disappointed ones matches trial-and-repeat research: advertising can win a first purchase, but repeat buying depends on the product. His choice to give up private-label volume and own the brand name is still the central decision for any Saudi manufacturer who packs for retailers. Dickinson's and Sunkist's reports add support for holding spend in a downturn, though both are self-reported success stories with no comparison group. The Ingersoll piece is a reminder that cash and debt, not ad budgets, sink most firms. The theatre editorial anticipates today's regulators: a few misleading advertisers can bring rules down on a whole category. What has dated: the editorial faith that price cuts plus advertising will make volume profitable, which ignores price wars, and the slogan registry. Use: pick the three things you want people to know about your product and repeat them in every ad for a year.
Passages worth keeping
We do not use large space. But we keep saying over and over again the relatively few things that we want people to know.
لا حاجة إلى مساحات إعلانية ضخمة، فالمهم تكرار رسائل قليلة محددة مرة بعد مرة حتى يعرفها الناس.
Advertising, we have found, is a quick and sure test of the merit of a product. It brings buyers; but it does not bring them back if they were disappointed the first time.
الإعلان يكشف حقيقة المنتج بسرعة، فهو يجلب المشتري أول مرة، لكن المنتج وحده هو ما يعيده.
If the product had been extravagantly advertised, there might be some justification for the charge. But the business was not over-advertised.
لا يصح لوم الإعلان على إفلاس شركة أنفقت عليه نسبة متواضعة، فسبب الانهيار كان في التمويل.
there is a natural desire on the part of all to learn more about that which they know little.
الناس يميلون إلى معرفة ما يجهلونه، فالمدخل الذي يطرح معلومة غير مألوفة يجذبهم إلى قراءة بقية الإعلان.
The theatrical industry will have to learn just as other businesses have learned, that a few sensational, untruthful advertisers, can undo all the constructive promotion of all the right-intentioned concerns in the industry.
قلة من المعلنين الكاذبين تكفي لهدم ثقة الناس بقطاع كامل، وقد تجلب عليه رقابة حكومية تضر الجميع.
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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