Evening star., 1900-10-27
AS A MEANS TO SUCCESS
SHREwD BUSINESS MEN REALIZE
THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLICITY.
Printers Ink, When Wisely Used, Is
All POwerfuI-How Advertise
ing Has Developed.

Mr.. Louis P. Darrell of the Hungerford &
Darrell Advertising Agency. advertising
managers and writer's for seventy-eight
local business houses, writes for The Star
as follows on the subject of publicity and
how it may best be obtained:
In this great struggle after the almighty
dollar, publicity holds the key 10 the sitd-
alton. Every man and every woman in
every walk of professional or business life
owes his or her success to publicity-or
failure to the lack of it. Many a great en-
terprise has missed its goal through not
enough publcity-many meritorious pep
aEation has died for want of publicity.
Publicity is advertising. 1t takes many
forms; sometimes acquaintances, sometimes
canvassing, but the broad far-reachinS
publicity that reaches the maximum num-
ber of people at the minimum cost and talks
all the time in the one favorable strain is
the publicity that Is gained through news
paper and magazine advertising. The great
est successes have been made on just those
lines.
Fortunes are spent in advertising each
year, and fortunes are almost quickly
made through its benefits. Advertising ap-
propriations of half million dollars a year
are not too far above the average to be
quoted.
To the layman who picks up his news
paper or magazine small question enters his
head as to the cost of those spaces filled
with advertising announcements-nor does
he think of the subtle thought and brain
tissue that rs expended to make those very
announcements catch his eye and hold his
attention. Down deep somewhere he has
an idea that the advertisements cost some
thing because he knows that they support
the publication in which they appear. Fur
ther than that he has no interest.
Changes in Recent Years.
Advertising cost was, in former years,
reckoned by inches. Space was a drug on
the market then and subscriptions were
higher. But the value of such publicity
gra adually made itself felt; rates for space
went up and subscriptions went down in
the interest of increased circulation, and
now those inches are divided up into parts
of fourteen lines each, and each line counts
as much in the bill inches did formerly.
Many newspapers hold their space
high as 81 for each of these fourteenth
parts of an inch, and some of the big
magazines are overcrowded for space at
Sc a line-or $4,000 page-each issue.
There can be no question as to whether or
not advertising is a profitable investment
when such prices are paid for shares in its
benefits.
OF course, like any other commodity. ad-
vertising space is reckoned by its value.
and its value determined by the quantity
and quality of the circulation of the me-
dunn
Washington Advertising.
Washington is fortunate in having in its
newspapers what is termed some of the
best advertising propositions in the coun-
try. The rates for space are below the
average, and the quality of the circulation
high. The newspapers here average about
IA of a cent a line per thousand for each
insertion of an advertisement. They give
mere in quantity alone for the cost than
.if,lo Of 1iToa ~ Ton,
of the newspapers of the country.
Advertisers can place their goods before
the two hundred and eighty odd thousand
people of Washington for less money pro-
portionally than in almost any other city
in America. And for this reason great
many enterprises have been started here.
The advertiser offers his goods to Wash
ington as a test. If his goods have the
proper selling merit, he soon finds it out
and feels comparatively safe in spreading
to other cities. He considers this city a
good criterion, for the newspapers have that
important quality of reaching the people"
at cost comparatively low. He undertakes
a minimum risk. Trade is what he is after
and he gets trade through the Washington
newspapers if his goods merit it,
Through the development of advertising
a new business was formed; a business Of
advertising experts. men who have made
advertising a study to be mastered and
have schemes for gaining publicity at their
finger tips.
The advertiser needed such man for
several reasons. The extensive campaigns
that are necessary to a national advertis-
ing success made it impossible for an adver-
tiser to conduct this branch with all its
detail work, without a too expensive force
of ad. writers, bookkeepers, checkers up
and clerks and a manager over all. The
expense of such force developed the idea
of the advertising agency, where the busi-
ness of several concerns can be carried on
with a reasonable force and without con-
fict.
The newspapers and magazines recognized
the value of these agencies in building up
new advertisers and allowed certain quail
fled agencies a nominal commission on all
new foreign business that these agencies
placed in their publications. The final re-
suit is that advertiser can place his
business in the hands of agency to be
conducted in all its detail without the least
trouble to himself and without it costing
him cent for the service.
Twenty-Five to thirty years have been suf-
ficient to make advertising art worthy
of it's thousands of followers-with its
schools and its graduates, its masters and
its novices. and the field broadens from
year to year, limited only by the brain ca.
pacity of the men who follow it.