The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1911-09-06

Recently before the Rochester IN.
Y) Advertising Club, Julius Schnei-
der, for some time advertising man
ager of THE Fair, of Chicago, and
one of the best known retail advertis-
ing men in the country, gave lee
ture on THE Next Evolution il. Ad-
vertising." He stated that, in his opin-
ion, this was the awakening of local
advertisers to the absolute necessity
for high grade advertising service
such as had made fortunes for the
large stores iii the big cities. He ad-
to join forces and engage the best ad-
vertising talent on cooperative ba-
sis, and pointed out that this really
must happen in very short period
as natural advance of the times.
Mr.. Schneider and others, evident
ly do not know that this evolution to-
wards high grade special service has
been taking place for some time. 1t
began with what a recalled Cut Ser
vices" That is, an engraving house in
one of the bigger cities would get
out number of more or less comic
advertising cuts, wretchedly drawn
by a tenth-rate artist, which it sold
to retailer, sometimes with little
advertisinf matter, in a series of &c
or so, one cut for each week in the
year.
While this was all educative, and
as such deserves some credit, it has
probably done more harm amongst re-
tailers, to the value of real publicity,
than anything else.
There are a great many of my read
ers who now have boxes of such cuts
lying around their stores with no clear
idea of what to do with them, and
even yet those small cut Services"
are being sold to deluded merchants
by glib travelling aslesmen.
Another herald of the new special
retail advertising was the local writ
er. He is also evouting He has
been getting better every year till
now, in some ways, he is quite ac-
complished. In the majority of cases,
however, the local ad writer has been
somewhat like Our Johnnie" who
has won a prize for drawing b'gosh!
and who forthwith blossoms out into
famous artist-locally. This class
of publicity has likewise done it's
share in giving the retail merchant
cold foot Tho Mt
writer has been mostly shining ex-
ample Of the trte saying "a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing"
The next phase in the evolution
was one that bid fair to solve all diff
ficulties. About year or two ago a
famous artist, who had made repu-
tation for a comic series of newspa-
per pictures, was induced to draw his
comics into advertisements. These
were syndicated in electrotype form
all through the United tSates and
Canada to all classes of retailers, the
large quantity sold Of each electrotype
making ii possible to quote extremely
low prices to the local merchants
That was the next rise in grade from
the old comic cuts of the local en-
gravers, because these drawings were
we'll done by first class artist Of ac-
knowledged standing.
We have now advanced one step fur
ther. The idea that it is necessary
to have a comic drawing to attract
attention is exploded AS a matter
of fact, a comic cut does more harm to
the advertisement than good, for it
makes the whole advertisement laugh
able and when people laugh at a
thing they seldom buy it, 1t is un-
fortunate that many merchants do not
realize this even now. a good joke
in picture form still appears to many
of them to be the acme of successful
publicity But they are learning.
There are now one or two concerns
who, with strong financial backing,
supply retail merchants with adver-
tisements, illustrated by the best ar
lists and written by advertising eX-
| perts who have specially dedicated
themselves to the work and who are
| paid large salaries for their services.
The advertisements supplied by those
firms are of the same grade as those
used by the large department stores
and national advertisers; they are
scientifically correct and are guaran-
teed to bring the retailer the maximum
of returns. They are supplied to the
local merchant with the sole right