Printers' Ink, March 11, 1891 (Vol. 4, No. 10): Artemas Ward's "Stray Shots" column
A weekly issue of Printers' Ink, the New York trade paper for advertisers, filed here for the "Stray Shots" column by Artemas Ward, advertising manager of Sapolio soap.
What it is
A weekly issue of Printers' Ink, the New York trade paper for advertisers, filed here for the "Stray Shots" column by Artemas Ward, advertising manager of Sapolio soap. Ward states his creed one medium at a time: newspapers first, as the most prompt and economical way to reach the public, then bill posting, street cars, bulletins, painted signs, door-to-door distribution, lithographs and enamelled iron signs, each with a cost or a war story. Out of $300,000 spent, painted signs took under $10,000, and a 32-page pamphlet costs as much as 64 newspaper spaces. The rest of the issue carries W. W. Hallock on soliciting advertising, J. F. Place on the three facts a distant advertiser wants from a newspaper, a plea for uniform column widths, a piece on railway advertising, and Thomas Beecham on spending £85,000 a year in the press.
Why read it now
Ward's column is an early media plan written as a list of beliefs, and its method still works: judge each channel by what it costs to deliver the message, how often it can repeat, and whether advertisers keep using it after a few years. His pamphlet sum, one appearance against 64 insertions for the same money, fits what modern media research says about steady presence beating one-off bursts. His ranking of newspapers above everything has dated; the rule behind it, put money where reach is cheap and repeatable, has not. Place's advice to publishers reads like a media kit brief: say where, how often and how old, and drop the adjectives. Hallock's point that buyers do not trust a new seller at the first meeting matches long B2B sales cycles today. Read the issue knowing that much of it promotes the publisher, Geo. P. Rowell & Co., and that circulation claims then were unaudited. To use it: write one line for every channel you pay for, with cost, repetition and whether you would renew it, then cut the ones you would not renew.
Passages worth keeping
I believe in newspaper advertising as the natural, most effective, most prompt and economical mode of reaching the great public.
يضع وارد الصحيفة في المرتبة الأولى لأنها تصل إلى عامة الناس بسرعة وبأقل كلفة، وكل وسيلة أخرى تأتي بعدها.
I believe in street car advertising. It buttonholes the citizen when he has small opportunity to avoid it.
إعلان عربة الترام يمسك بالراكب في مكان لا يستطيع فيه تجنبه، وهذه قوة الإعلان في الأماكن التي يبقى فيها الناس مضطرين.
A 32-page pamphlet distributed to houses costs as much as 64 spaces (equivalent to its page size) would cost in a great daily, and the pamphlet would appear once
الكتيب الموزع على البيوت يظهر مرة واحدة، والمبلغ نفسه يشتري 64 ظهورًا في صحيفة كبيرة، فالتكرار أرخص من الضربة الواحدة.
One marked commentary on most plans of advertising, except the legitimate newspaper, is that few advertisers continue to use them after some years of experiment.
أصدق اختبار للوسيلة أن يعود إليها المعلنون بعد سنوات من التجربة، فالوسيلة التي يتركونها لم تثبت جدواها.
Advertisers have been deceived so much that they don't as a rule trust strangers with good orders at the first interview.
كثرة الخداع جعلت المعلن لا يعطي طلبًا كبيرًا لبائع لا يعرفه من أول لقاء، فالثقة تُبنى على مدى أسابيع أو شهور.
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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