The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-01-13
REFRIGERATION THE WORST ADVERTISING i SIN, SAYS SPARROW Veteran Ad Writer Tells What He Considers Good
 Advertising HUMAN INTEREST
 ON CLASSIFIED PAGE White Space Valuable In an Ad and Will Attract Attention Quicker
 Than Anything Else-Ob-
 longs Better Read.

Every good advertisement must be at tractive physically and convincing men, tally stated John Sparrow of the Spar row Advertising agency and president of the Birmingham Ad club, yesterday. 'If any advertising proposition is sound and honest and properly put together, it Is bound to be paying investment for the man behind it. There is not even a semblance of chance about it.
 The real advertising page of any news paper, however, is its classified or want page That is the real mirror of the daily life of the city. It contains more genuine human interest news than all the rest of the entire paper combined. if the reader has the skill to get down to it and read between the lines-daily stories of pathos, humor, tragedy, trouble, pros- perity, poverty and everything else. believe that the classified want page of a oaliy metropolitan newspaper has more readers than any other one section of the paper.
 Must Be Attractive.
 "The physical makeup of ~ djsnlav advertisement comes first in the attention o1 the good ad writer. An ad to be read must be attractive in order to catch inc eye. To do that there should always be plenty or space used. Any man who de- cioes to advertise at all makes |. serious mistake by attempted economy in usinp cramped space for what he has to say. The most attractive single thing about an ao IS White space. There should be plenty or 1t in every ad. It will not only attract attention to the ad, but if wl, make 1t easier to read after attention is attracted to it. The same series or class or type should be used throughout an ad although 1t can be used in different sizas It should be made up in a common sense systematic, orderly way. Above all things, avoid the crazy quilt fad
 A good ad man regards his ad as a piece or news. He must remember that IL mas to compete with the many intarest- ing news stories and other features of inc paper. TO do so 1t should be news itself u ;. u siiouiu De what in newspaper talk IS known as played up.' If an eljtor ba . a piece of news he wishes ia o.,, ie'' ton to but which he knows does no, hold os nluch interest for the general nublic as other stories which will appear in bis paper what does he do? He writes big ana attractive headlines over the stors, or puts some feature into it to attract {. f, .eh,ion. That's the same thing that inc advertising man has got to do cut should be used always if nos sipie It lends attractiyeness t., t,. ad and helps to draw inc first .o ene .ion or the reader. Always. if nossihia .he text or the ad should be writtea ,,, .o the cut, making the two wort, toY
 Always Better Read
 q, actual tests have demonstrated thai ene opfong ad is better read tban ,,, osnsr shape. Why this is it might ba naru to explain exactly but actual tests haue ha oI the different shapes of an ad the most attention-that is. an a,l "nlch ,.l, IS little deeper than wide.
 ihe two great stumbling blocks of a"V "Vertlsing IS worn out vocabulary ana extreme cleverness. The man with me worn out and limited vocabulary Us to useless, senseless and con s.ahtiy repeated eXaggeration. The same old adJectives in the same old way arc worked over and over.4 The ad Is no good. On the other hand. the man who is a literary genius and is exceedingly clever attracts attention ,to iihiseii. lie adVert1SeS himself and the man who reads his stuff forgets about "hat Is being advertised in thinlxinr ana absorbing the cleverness of inc writer. The biggest single sin of ad- vertising today, however I believe is III exaggeration, taxing the credulitv of me people by that awful fateful and constant repetition of the same old ad- Jectives and superlatives. But in this very thing right now there is work Ing a revolution and the time is fast coming when believe this adyertisins. sin Will have entirely disappeared
 The great value of advertising is continuity. Experience proves beyond uoupt that regular, systematic cam pa1gn of advertising carried on bv Il regular schedule is far more produo- tive than the spasmidoc, fly-off-Ihe- handle kind. Even if smaller space must be used for each ad, this system 1s better in results. It is this xin,l or advertising that gives stability tc the advertisers business and astah~ fishes confidence in the minds of th. public regarding his concern-an' as. set to any business impossible to es. innate in dollars and cents
 The ad section of newspaper nova : days is just as necessary to She giv- ing of the news of the day as is the rest of the paper. Imagine, if VOL can, newspaper carrying nothing but strictly news stories without an adver- tisement in it and you see how neces- sary. what a really vital part of the daily news advertising is