The daily morning Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Oregon) 1883-1899, 1894-03-18
THE ART OF ADVERTISING
Novelty is the Key to Sueeess-Be Original
and Your Fortune Is (lade.

NOES advertising pay? You are often
puzzle over this problem. Some
times you think 1t does, and then again
you are not certain.
There are days when an attractive au-
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 if 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-
vertising 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 800 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 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 a
short month or two. The cheap, little
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-gre in their
power of attracting people. They were
full of business, even though they lack
style"
The kind of advertisements which
would prove a 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
the business sense.
Remember there are other stores. inst
IS good as yours, who sell at equally
ow prices. Your only advantage-and
t is yours if you take it's to have
'etter advertising than they. This does
lot necessarily mean larger advertising
n more costly, for it is not the size Of 7
he space that tells, but what is said I
nd how it is said that attracts notice
nd excltes suriosity.
If you cannot spend $1,000 a week in 7
dvertising, spend $500. If you cannot t
pend so much, spend $lOO, and if vour !
usiness will not allow more than $40 to {
c so invested, spend that Do not saw
here is no advertising except in
lrge way. One might as well sav that :,
fve-cent package of seeds from tbo p
orist will not grow as well as the same :,
sed bought in bushel quantities Have "
ood seed and plant it in good soil. in :,
ther words, write good advertise ?,
tent and put it in good paper. Ten .,
'llars in The Astorian viii pay for 100 :,