| Show CLEVER ADVERTISING I How Printers Ink Has Been Made to Pay Best t PROFIT IN ENTERPRISE t SOME DEFACE NAT AND ONLY WASTE GOOD MON Irviags Knickerbocker History of New York Was Introduced to Public By Shrewd Use of New paper Advertising Columns Americans Am-ericans Astound French eca Aud Fenc Advertising Is an old custom dating I as far back as the seventeenth century The advertiser today herefore has over two centuries of experience indirection j In-direction upon which he may draw I i not at all strange then that modern advertising should be developed Into not only an ordinary business but In some cases into an artistic science For It Is artstc n science to be able to attract the attention at-tention of the public in a pleasing way and many unique and startling advertisements adver-tisements have be the result of the ence and energy of the A erlcan merchant u advertiser 1 would perhaps be interesting to note a few of the ways In which these men have from time to time tried to attract the public notice The reader may remember how Father Knickerbockers History of New York Washington Irving was first introduced to the public I Is a good illustration of the genius and originality or-iginality of the American advertiser One day there appeared in one of the daily papers in large type an advertisement adver-tisement which read something like this MISSING Short stout man broad brimmed hat light kneebreeches rather eccentric calls himself Father Knickerbocker Last seen at Astor House two days ago Any information informa-tion regarding him will be gratefully received Address Box 311 this paper This advertisement appeared everyday every-day for some time and people began to wonder and ask themselves who this Father Knickerbocker could be Wild rumors were circulated of an immense fortune that was waiting for him and an enterprising newspaper came out with the statement thta he had been discovered drowned in the East river Letters of inquiry poured into box 314 of the paper which issued the advertisement adver-tisement but not one of these received tsement an answer In the midst of the excitement there appeared In still larger type In the same paper this advertisement advertsement DISCOVEREDA big bag belonging to Father Knickerbocker the missing man The bag contained a letter and a manuscript the letter explains that the manuscript Is a History of New York which Father Knickerbocker wishes to have published as soon as he has departed to parts unknown The manuscript is now in course of publication and will be Issued In a short time The book was then advertised In the regular way Of course when people began to see through the hoax they naturally felt rather cheap especially the paper which had printed the East river drowning incident but the object of the publisher had been attained He had got the people talking It is needless need-less to say that the book had a ready sale It is usually a clever piece of advertising adver-tising of the indirect kind like the above that brings the largest returns Speaking of book advertising reminds the writer of an instance he heard of not long ago A certain author Lane we shall call him had written a very clever book but for some reason there was no call for it It was a book describing incidents inci-dents in one of the ancient wars the facts of which he had collected after great labor About this time one of the great popular writers came out with a book very similar to the one which Lane had written It immediately had an enormous sale and became known ctimout the Englishspeaking world ie began legal proceedings against the great writer on the ground that he had stolen his facts from his Lanes book The lawsuit of course appeared in the papers and people began to buy Lanes book to compare it with the great production Its sale increased enormously as there was real merit in the work and although Lane lost his case against the great writer his book had at last become known and a good income was the result The only reason I brought the matter mat-ter before the courts he remarked afterward af-terward to a friend was to get people talking about my work He had true Overusing genius One very clever scheme of advertising was that accomplished by a celebrated pencil firm which has large cedar mills in Florida This concern sent a shipload of superb oranges to New York from its plantation Each orange was wrapped in tissue paper upon which was printed This orange was grown on a Florida plantation where the cedar is produced for the Co pencils Large numbers of these oranges were packed in small baskets each holding half a dozen oranges and then sent to all sorts of people The president and his cabinet the United States senators and members of the supreme court each received a basket They were also sent to all the great men and women of every profession Including singers actors authors ministers lawyers bankers and editors of large papers The lastnamed class probably did more for the company than any of the others oth-ers by the highly complimentary press notices which appeared soon after In their respective papers America is far ahead of European countries in the matter of advertising Newspaper circles In Paris not long ago were electrified by an advertisement of an American patent medicine company which appeared in one of their Journals Jour-nals for which 17500 francs 3500 had been paid No such price had ever before be-fore been paid in France for nn advertisement adver-tisement and the concern was looked upon as a company of merchant adventurers ad-venturers However it has probably opened the French merchants eyes to the fact that perhaps that sort of advertising ad-vertising pays after all as they now seem to be paying larger prices for advertising ad-vertising than ever before In America J3500 for an advertisement advertise-ment is an everyday affair and a year or two ago a wellknown company paid 18000 for a single advertisement to be placed on the back cover of the Christmas Christ-mas number of a certain paper One of the most novel feats of advertising adver-tising in recent years was that accomplished accom-plished by two young men not long ago They were sent out by a large concern In New York which provided them with plenty of money and instructed them to paint signs wherever American travel was most frequent all over Europe Eu-rope They returned in about two years and a half In that time they used about six tons of paint and 40000 A largo portion of the latter had been spent for space privileges These two young men had been in nearly every country In Europe and painted signs on the side walls of large buildings in London Paris Berlin Rome Constantinople Constan-tinople etc They went through the Alps painting their signs in letters twenty feet high pn the sides of some of the great cliffs which tower over the roads and paths through those grand mountains Just Imagine an American traveler far away from New York In the heart of the Swiss mountains who i should suddenly see ahead of him painted on the side of a mountain one of those old familiar trademarks oC America Use It would certainly leave a deep Impression upon his mind which would last until he returned to America So they went on painting signs everywhere They are accredited with having painted a large number on the Pyramids of Egypt They even tried it Is said to get the sultan to allow them to put their signs on the wall of his palace but this he did not allow them to do strange to say However How-ever they contented themselves with signs on some of the Mohammedan mosques in Constantinople The young men said they had better success in Constantinople than anywhere ese fur the Moslem is a lover of bright colors and the big red blue and yellow signs seemed to please him One old fellow came out and begged them to put a son s-on the fi ont of his dwelling He see to consider it quite a decoration Sometimes when we are in a poetical frame of mind we become perhaps somewhat irritated by the advertisements advertise-ments which one sees put up everywhere every-where perhaps spoiling the beauty of a landscape or making a city hideous with many staring posters But when we remember that each of those signs represents some great industry which m turn is one of the financial pillars of our great nation and that same industry in-dustry has been developed by the modern mod-ern advertisement then the great gaudy signs wear quite a different aspect to us |
