The herald., 1897-10-03

| The young man who inserted the first
one probably thought he was very
crafty. He did not confine his plea for
| EN- ployment to any one class Of wants
He embraced everything and every
| body. He thought that he would get a
barrel Of responses from people who
wanted all sorts of young men for Ii
sorts of purposes. and that he would be
able from among all this mass, OF, eplies.
to select those who wanted something
done that he was able and qualified to
do. I would be very much surprised to
learn that he received single response.
There is really not the slightest reason
why he should receive any.
Now, mark the altogether different
way in which No. goes a bout it. He is,
coachman, and he says so. He appeals
directly and solely to people who want
coachmen. He says he is a good man
for such job, briefly tells why, and
promises to prove it by both the written
and oral testimony Of hisi former en-
ployers. The man probably has a job
by this time-if he told the truth in his
ad-and Young man No. has probably
concluded that advertising doesn't
pay"
Such advertising as he did never has
paid and never will pay.
No doubt young man No l can Go
something well. Very probably he is
peculiarly fitted by natural bent and by
training TO perform just the services
that you or are in need of. Perhaps
we are looking for him now. We will
never find him, though, and he won't
find us. Instead Of speaking up and
telling what he was good for, and why,
he gives us meaningless generalities
AS far as We are able to judge from his
ad, he is one of the great mass which IS
little good for almost everything and
not much good for anything We know
plenty Of that class Of persons bow,
without seeking. TO find more by corre-
spondence with young man No. l.
These simple and inconspicuous little
want ads illustrate one of the most i'm
portant principles Of advertising.
very large proportion of merchants
who. advertise give us no real reason
why we should come to their stores.
They want to do too much. They want
to advertise the whole shop, from the
knob on the front door to the ash barrel
in the back alley. When they sit down;
to write an ad they have the image of
the entire outfit in their minds eye and
they try to fix that image on one piece
Of copy paper. The ad, when they get
through, is a colorless, confusing con-
glomeration Of their entire stock. In
trying to do everything they have dorse
nothing. In their attempt to appeal to
everybody they have reached nobody
at all.
People are too busy nowadays to wade
through long price lists of all sorts of
things that do not particularly interest
them, or to read what is virtually
stock-taking schedule. In order to sell
goods you have to make people read
about them. In order to make people
read you have got to talk about some
thing that interests them.
Filling your space with generalities
won't interest anybody. talk abou,
some seasonable article will interest
those who are in need of that article.
It's better to interest ten people thor
oughly in one article than to merely
catch the eyes Of a thousand people
The ad that wins sales is the ID that
talks about one thing or class of things,
in a manner to convince people who
have want in that direction that here
is the thing that will most satisfactorily
fill that want.
The ad that fails is the ad that tries
to do everything at once, and conv.irces
nobody of anything in particular.-T.
H., in Trafficdom.