The daily morning Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Oregon) 1883-1899, 1894-03-20
THE ART OF ADVERTISING
Novelty is the Key to SueeeSS--Be Original
and Your Fortune Is lNade.
Q . 0 Q

QlLu 1Uui "
o o
n OEs advertising pay? You are often
puzzle over this problem Some
times you think it does, and then again
you are not certain.
There are days when an attractive ad-
vertisement just packs your store
with trade, and inquiries come dribbling
in for a month afterward for articles
advertised that day. But some days
the advertisement seems to fall fiat. 1t
is on these days that your faith grows
shaky, and il you do not doubt the util-
ity of advertising you blame the card.
If you write your own advertisements
and lose confidence in yourself, you had
better employ some one who makes ad-
vertlsing his special business.
To write an original advertisement,
every day in the year, on the same
never-changing theme, is very much
like taking ten yards of dress goods and
making a new and entirely different
dress of it 300 times in succession. 1t
takes a clever head to do either. He
must see the store side of the advertise
ment and the customers side Of it, the
one as clearly as the other. Unwise ad
vertising can pull down trade and ex-
haust your finances more rapidly than
good advertising can build up the one
or add to the other.
Think of house which, in the busy
season." when everybody is buying cost
ly outer garments, wasting its advertis-
ing space on three cent and five cent
notions, often not mentioning their val
liable stock once in a whole week. 1t is
like a sportsman who wastes his am
munition on sparrows when ducks are
flying overhead. The harvest time for
expensive merchandise is at best but
profit stuff, like the poor, we have al
ways with us. If an advertiser does not
possess business wit, along with literary
ability, he will never make a success of
his calling. We often see advertise
ments without the slightest literary |
merit, written in faulty English and set |
up atrociously, which nevertheless are
great advertisements-great in their
power Of attracting people. They were
full of business, even though they lack
"style."
The kind of advertisements which
would prove success for one store
might not do at all for another even
though in the same line Of business
and perhaps located right next door
The capacity for knowing his audience
must be innate in the writer; so must
he business sense.
Remember there are other stores, inst
Is good as yours, who sell at equally
ow prices. Your only advantage-and
is yours if you take it's to have
'etter advertising than they. This does
lot necessarily mean larger ADVERTISING
II more costly, for it is not the size of :
he space that tells. but what is said t
nd how it is said that attracts notice
nd excites suriosity.
If you cannot spend $1,000 a week in =
dvertising, spend $500 If you cannot t
pend so much, spend $lOO. and if your !
usiness will not allow more than $40 70 c
e so invested, spend that Do not saw .
here is no advertising except in
urge way. One might as well say that =
five-cent package of seeds from tho >,
orist will not grow as well as the same >,
ed bought In bushel quantities. Have "
BOD seed and plant 1t in good soil IN =.
her words. write a good advertise .,