The Thompson Red Book on Advertising (1899)
The Red Book is the 1899 annual the J. Walter Thompson Company sent to advertisers.
What it is
The Red Book is the 1899 annual the J. Walter Thompson Company sent to advertisers. The first 11 pages carry the agency's pitch: a 'Business Chat', a note on printing with tinted papers and matched inks, an allegory comparing advertising to the coconut palm, and short 'Suggestions to Advertisers' on copy, media and illustrations. Twenty pages then reprint ads the agency placed for clients such as Eskay's Food, Prudential, Mennen's talcum powder, Libby's luncheon meats and Veeder cyclometers. Most of the book is a media directory: dailies and weeklies in US and Canadian towns of 5,000 people or more, arranged by region, then magazines, mail order papers, religious, agricultural, fraternal, educational, medical and foreign language papers, each with estimated circulation, line rate and the date forms close. An errata sheet corrects circulations and rates received after printing.
Why read it now
Read it to see how media planning worked before audited numbers existed. Several ideas hold. The agency sorts papers by the reader they carry and says a religious paper lends weight to the ads in it; modern research on context effects agrees that the setting changes how an ad is received. It argues for placing one message across many kinds of media and says repetition does not tire readers; later studies of ad wear-out generally find it arrives later than advertisers fear. Its advice to run large ads for impression and small ones as reminders is close to how launch bursts and reminder weight are split today. What has dated: circulation figures come in four grades, 'claimed', 'estimated', 'guaranteed' and 'sworn', and the errata sheet fixes one surgery journal from 2,800 to 28,000. Independent audits only arrived with the Audit Bureau of Circulations in 1914. Some specimen ads make health claims no regulator would pass today. Use it as a template: list your outlets by reader context with reach, price and deadline, and label each reach figure by how it was verified.
Passages worth keeping
It is true that a reader may see an advertisement in a monthly magazine, and then in his religious paper, and again in his local sheet; but it is not the repetition that tires; it is the emphasis that helps.
رؤية القارئ للإعلان نفسه في المجلة ثم في الصحيفة الدينية ثم في الصحيفة المحلية لا تُضجره، بل تقوّي الرسالة في ذهنه.
Advertising illustrations as a rule should show the goods in actual use, and aim to convince possible customers of their merits.
الصورة في الإعلان تؤدي عملها حين تُظهر المنتج وهو يُستعمل فعلًا، فتقنع المشتري بمزاياه بدل أن تكون زينة.
Half the battle is fought before an advertisement is printed, therefore its preparation should be placed in the hands of those who are most competent.
نجاح الإعلان يتقرر في مرحلة الإعداد قبل النشر، لذلك يجب أن يتولى كتابته من يملك الخبرة.
Large advertisements for impressions and smaller ones for reminders are unusually effective.
الإعلان الكبير يصنع الانطباع الأول، والإعلانات الصغيرة بعده تكفي للتذكير، وهذا المزيج أوفر وأنفع.
Little, wide-awake advertisements often prove to be giants in disguise.
الإعلان الصغير إذا كان حيًا ومتقنًا قد يحقق أثرًا يفوق حجمه بكثير.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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