Printers' Ink, January 1, 1925 (Vol. 130, No. 1)
The New Year's Day 1925 issue of Printers' Ink, a 192-page weekly from the Printers' Ink Publishing Co., with N. W. Ayer & Son's greeting on the cover.
What it is
The New Year's Day 1925 issue of Printers' Ink, a 192-page weekly from the Printers' Ink Publishing Co., with N. W. Ayer & Son's greeting on the cover. The lead, by an unnamed manufacturer, argues that looser credit would cut selling costs far more than it adds in bad debts. A report explains the Federal Trade Commission's complaint that the 4A's and publisher groups pushed direct advertisers to pay agency gross rates. R. A. Ferguson asks how to judge a star salesman against territory potential; a commercial art manager argues that layout rules like left-to-right flow can be broken; a reader asking about small versus large space is told "it all depends". Marion Hertha Clarke says women buy the dream, not the mechanism; W. Livingston Larned defends scare headlines backed by a real reason; James H. Collins opposes a bill to ban trust-company advertising. Editorials retell Schiller's Pegasus fable.
Why read it now
By 1925 the journal had become a working manual for sales and advertising managers, and several pieces still apply. Larned's rule for fear headlines, frighten only when the copy that follows gives a valid reason and a constructive remedy, matches later fear-appeal research: a threat persuades when paired with a clear, doable response and backfires without one. Ferguson's points that losing a customer costs more than winning one and that big orders can hide thin margins are standard retention and profitability thinking now. The space debate ends with "it all depends", which is honest; planners still test reach against frequency rather than assume. The FTC complaint is an early round in the fight over agency commission, which fee-based pay has since largely replaced. What has dated: Clarke's picture of women as creatures of whims and contradictions is a period stereotype, though her advice to sell the outcome rather than the parts survives; the loose-credit essay ignores cash flow. Use: when a headline leans on fear, check that the next paragraph gives a specific fix the reader can act on today.
Passages worth keeping
In the case of the sensational headline, everything depends upon the paragraphs which follow. They can make or break the idea.
العنوان المثير لا يحكم عليه وحده، فالفقرات التي تليه هي التي تثبت أن الإثارة مبررة أو تكشف أنها خدعة.
It is a well-accepted fact that it costs money to get a new account. It costs twice as much to lose an old one.
كسب عميل جديد مكلف، لكن خسارة عميل قديم أشد كلفة، ولذلك يجب أن يحاسَب المندوب على العملاء الذين فقدهم لا على الجدد فقط.
It is the dream of what your product will do for her that causes a woman to buy. Not how many nuts and screws it has, nor how many threads it will pick up.
المشترية تدفع ثمن النتيجة التي تتخيلها في حياتها، لا ثمن تفاصيل الآلة ومواصفاتها التقنية.
Pegasus is advertising. Hodge is the near-sighted business executive.
في حكاية الافتتاحية يمثل الحصان المجنح الإعلان، ويمثل الفلاح قصير النظر المدير الذي يجوّع إعلانه ثم يلومه على الفشل.
The inference from this is that advertising is the best weapon for the smaller manufacturer to use in contending with huge mergers.
الشركة الصغيرة تستطيع منافسة الكيانات العملاقة، وأقوى سلاح لها في ذلك الإعلان، لأنه متاح لها كما هو متاح للكبار.
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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