The daily morning Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Oregon) 1883-1899, 1894-03-22
THE ART OF ADVERTISING
Novelty is the Key to Suesess-Be Original
and Your Fortune Is Qlade.

n oEs advertising pay? You are often
puzzle over this problem. Some
times you think it does, and then agaih
you are not certain.
There are days when an attractive ad-
vertisement just packs" your store
with trade, and inquiries come dribpling
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
shalIy, and if you do not doubt the util-
ny 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 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 a 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 q 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-grea in their
power of attracting people They were
full of business even though they lack
4style,'
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; 80 must
the business sense.
Remember there are other stores, just
as good as yours, who sell at equally
low prices. Your only advantage-and
it is yours If you take it's to have
better advertising than they This does
not necessarily mean larger advertising
or more costly, for it is not the size of
the space that tells, bus what is said
and how it is said that attracts notice
and eXcites spriosity
II You eannot spend $1,000 a week in
advertising, spend $500. II you cannot
spend so much, spend $l0O, and If your
business will not allow more than $40 to
be so invested, spend that Do not say
there is no advertising except in
large way. One might as well say that
e fve-cent package of seeds from the
florist viii not grow as well as the same
seed bought in bushel quantities. Have
good seed and plant it in good soil. in
other words, write good advertise
ment and put it in a good paper. Ten
dollars in The Astoran VIII nav for 1O6