Printers' Ink, Volume 105 (October to December 1918)
Thirteen weekly issues of the New York advertising trade journal, 3 October to 26 December 1918, bound as volume 105, about 2,000 scanned pages.
What it is
Thirteen weekly issues of the New York advertising trade journal, 3 October to 26 December 1918, bound as volume 105, about 2,000 scanned pages. The run covers the last weeks of the First World War and the armistice, and the articles follow that turn: paper rationing and which catalogues and house organs were still allowed; how "non-essential" firms such as Revillon Freres kept advertising by featuring the house instead of the goods; Colgate's influenza copy, which led with health rules and kept its toothpaste in the background; E. T. Gundlach calling advertising "a means to industry"; G. A. Nichols on reading inquiry letters for hidden leads; a timed reading test for choosing catalogue type; Bruce Bliven on Rogers Peet's forty-year copy style; the Ohio prohibition campaign; and forecasts of a record 1919. Agency and publisher ads, editorials and "The Little Schoolmaster's Classroom" fill the rest.
Why read it now
Read in bulk, a trade weekly shows what the business argued about, not only what it concluded. Several arguments still hold. Colgate's influenza copy put the public's need first and the brand second, and its advertising manager said why in plain words; the same test was applied to brands during Covid-19 in 2020. Revillon's switch from showing fur coats to telling the firm's history is still the usual answer when a product is out of step with the public mood: keep the name in view, stop pushing the goods. The catalogue type test, which sets real copy several ways and times several readers over three readings, is a usability test before the term existed. Nichols's point that answered letters hide unused leads applies directly to WhatsApp and Instagram inboxes. What has dated: the anti-German trade talk, prohibition treated as a sales problem, and the boom forecasts, which the 1920 to 1921 slump overtook. Use: take one article a week, apply its method to one live problem, and record the result.
Passages worth keeping
A man selling his customers what they ask for and nothing else can be called a storekeeper. He who sells his customers more than they came to the store to buy is a merchant.
من يبيع العميل ما طلبه فقط صاحب دكان، أما التاجر فيبيعه أكثر مما جاء من أجله، فكل طلب فرصة لعرض ما يكمّله.
An epidemic is a matter of life or death for thousands. It is not the part of wisdom to capitalize and make use of such a subject and such a time in too mercenary or too selfish a way.
الوباء مسألة حياة أو موت، وليس من الحكمة أن تستغله العلامة للربح بجشع أو أنانية، فخدمة الناس بصدق في الأزمة تبني ثقة تدوم.
The fallacy within the question lies in the assumption that advertising is an industry, whereas in reality it is a means to industry.
الخطأ هو اعتبار الإعلان صناعة قائمة بذاتها، فهو وسيلة تخدم الصناعة والتوزيع، ويُحكم عليه بقيمة ما يعلن عنه.
A good experiment to try out at this point is to hand the pages to several people and ask them to read each page through, numbers, descriptions and prices, and time them.
لاختيار خط الكتالوج، أعطِ الصفحات لعدة أشخاص واطلب منهم قراءة الأرقام والأوصاف والأسعار، وقِس الوقت الذي يستغرقونه.
Advertising which is to create a pleasant, friendly interest must be of such a character that the reader will turn to it voluntarily and will read it for its own sake.
الإعلان الذي يريد اهتمامًا وديًا يجب أن يكون ممتعًا بما يكفي ليقرأه الناس برغبتهم ولذاته، لا لأنهم دُفعوا إليه.
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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