The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-01-17
They Beguile People Into Buying
Writing Fetching Advertisements
Fine Indianapolis riters

per day TO five. They also plan out the
large display advertisements and draw the
outlines OF them on large sheets of paper,
allowing for the various sized type that
are to be used, and for spaces and every
thing that is to go into the advertisement.
This is done so that he can tell just how
the whole thing will appear In print. To
assemble and arrange a large display ad. is
by no means a small thing TO accomplish.
An adj writer In of the department
stores here, in speaking of his work, said:
whenever man In the advertising de-
partment of one of these stores wants
holiday he has to do about three days work
In two TO get il. AS We are situated an adj
vertisement has TO be written every day,
and il will vary in length according to the
amount we want TO advertise. My expert
ence has been that in ad. writing, after
all. the strength of the advertisement is in
the story one has TO tell about the goods.
l am on the outlook all the time for items
which bear on the particular lines of goods
that we handle Women are very reasona-
BILE, and / have found that a news item
appeals TO them very quickly. Another
thing that / watch very closely is catch
lines-that is, a line in an advertisement
that appears in larger type than the rest,
and to find out the meaning of ii one has
to read the whole ad Pictures some
thing that appeal to the average person,
and are also very good. for they, together
with the price of the article, tell the story"
An ad writer studies all kinds of headlines
and the arrangement of them i'm the paper.
And an idea which every member of the
craft follows is TO get something unusual
in the heading, so that it will attract the
eye OF the reader. This is as necessary as
IL is for the editor of the newspaper to do
the same thing. Another rule that they all
follow Is never TO let paragraph be fin
ished without saying something about the
quality OF the goods. That is an important
fact that all first-clasS ad writers endeaVOr
TO keep before the public all the time. In
writing advertisements 1t is said that the
writer must not make his reading matter
too heavy, for people reading ads will not
have their minds in condition TO digest 1t;
but the writer must also abstain from
writing jokes. 1t is said If he can say
clever things it is ll-right, but if he makes
a pointed joke people will remember the
humor and forget the advertisement; His
quaint sayings and odd expressions.
EXCLUSIVE TYPE.
The ad writer's also endeavor to get some
one thing that is entirely distinctive to
the house for which they are writing. For
instance-there is a large dry goods store
in the city that owns type which is left
in the newspaper offices and is used ex-
clusively by this one concern.
Our idea for doing this said the ad-
vertising man of this store, lis that indi-
viduality in type has a certain commercial
value and so has this individuality in type
a distinct business value. At any rate,
our advertisements are dressed different
from others, which alone forces recognition.
If a concern can afford TO own a certain
amount of it's own type and borders il pos
SeSseS a distinct advantage over its COM
Detitors from the fact that its advertise
ments possesses an individuality which
theirs do not.
1T is rather peculiar what effect type has
upon the human mind. In this city the adj
writer's do not have To watch this as closely
as in such places as New York and Chi
cago. There very strict attention has to be
paid To this, for ii depends greatly on the
style of the paper you are advertising in.
The man who works all day in an office
where business runs on quiet, systematic
basis, and lives in a house where order is
always observed will be shocked on opening
a newspaper To see tremendous and Outra-
geOus type in the advertisements But YOU
have only 10 stop and think of the thou
sands that this style of type does not shock.
man whose life is always quiet and away
from the noise. The class To which an ad-
vertisement appeals may work all day in a
boiler shop or factory, In a sWeatshOp,
where the whrr of machinery is only
drowned by the shrieking of taskmasters:
on the dock. where the trundle of barrOWs,
the clankng of chains and the kissing of
steam is constant: or in the tunnel. where
the dripping of the water is lost in the
eternal picking shoveling. blasting and
noise overhead of vehicles. They do a day $
work under such conditions. When they go
home 10 the tenement house region, where
| the noise OF surface and elevated trains pur-
sues them and influences of corner saloons
are felt i'm tenement-hOuse fights. which
are nightly occurrences. Such readers de-
/ mand excitement. and excitement must be
kept up. even To the type
ION the other hand, there is the eXquis-
|! itely sensitive, the highly cultured variety
OF people, who are best appealed to by type