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Concerning Testimonials

N the August number of "Agricultural Advertising," Mr. Kueckelhan, writing in the department called "Random Notes," gives us a vigorous and well-written exposition of the weak side of testimonials, attacking their effectiveness in advertising and in advertising literature.

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It happens that we make bread, and some little butter, by going up and down the land preaching the gospel of advertising, and particularly of agricultural advertising, and having had many good talks with the men who spend their money in advertising, regarding this same matter of the value of testimonials, we are moved to answer the gentleman with the Russian name. In this connection, we remember a talk we had one evening on the veranda of a little hotel down in Indiana, with one of the great old men of the advertising business. He was speaking of a brilliant young fellow who has recently shot athwart the advertising field.

"He's at the theoretical age," said this fine old man, pulling at his cigar.

"Most young fellows get that way some time in their career. They talk with half a dozen advertisers, and then go home and lay awake thinking of what they have heard. 'Eureka' they cry, 'I have deducted this or that. It is evident that testimonials are no good, or that follow-up letters are a fraud. I shall here and now light the lamp, and sitting in my robe de nuit write articles for advertising magazines to prove that the things that were are no more.'"

We think the old man had got very near home. He had brought to light one of the weaknesses of any kind of writing on business, and on the advertising business in particular. Take the simple matter of testimonials and their value, tomes have been written to denounce them, and many a clever writer has tried in two pages to prove them absolutely of no account, but we can remember an advertiser who has another story to tell. We called on

this man one day last summer. He had worked his inquiries with followup letters, booklets, and in every way known to clever advertising managers, and then as a last resort he sent out a big sheet of testimonials.

"I began to get orders then," he said. "Farmers seemed to like the idea of our telling them what other farmers thought of our goods."

Now, because certain manufacturers of proprietary medicines, consumption cures, cancer cures, and others of that ilk, and various floaters of investment schemes, have used testimonials that were evidently fraudulent, this writer in "Agricultural Advertising" asked us to throw this powerful agent for results overboard, and touch it no more with our fingers, because he says it is a thing unclean. How about good, plain, common sense in this matter? Are we to suppose that such advertisers as the Postum Cereal Company, Studebaker Bros. Mfg. Co., and other great and successful advertisers who use testimonials, do not know what they are about? Or take this same number of "Agricultural Advertising," and look to where one of the advertisers prints testimonials from such well-known houses as Montgomery Ward & Co. of Chicago, J. Stevens Arms & Tool Company of Chicopee Falls, Mass.; Kemp & Burpee of Syracuse, N. Y.; Kalamazoo Carriage & Harness Company of Kalamazoo, Mich., and P. M. Sharples Company of West Chester, Pa.; are we to suppose such work ineffective and weak, and that these people could be induced to let their names appear at the bottom of an insincere testimonial? The simple truth is probably this: There are fools in the world in great numbers, but in the end at least a voting majority of the men and women who have money to spend are moved to their buying by good sense. These people will recognize a fraudulent testimonial, and they will be influenced by a straight, honest testimonial from an honest house published and put out by an honest ad

vertiser. They will read it with interest because it is an expression of opinion by a man or firm of men who have spent good money to get the experience that is published broadcast. The gentleman who writes in "Agricultural Advertising" may have had quantities of insect powder offered him for his name at the bottom of a testimonial, but we will go the length of a good dinner he has had no offers of any kind from reputable advertisers for his name on a testimonial. Manufacturers of stoves, pianos, plows, wagons, and publishers of great periodicals do not buy testimonials, and do not need to buy testimonials. And all of these are constant and persistent users of testimonials in their advertising literature.

S. A.

A good many people take a "flier" in advertising-and usually their flight is mighty short. Among birds, the quafl and the pheasant get up with a terrible racket and travel swiftly, but only for a few hundred yards, as a rule. The tur key-buzzard does not stand high socially in the bird kingdom, but he has most other birds hereabouts beaten to a standstill when it comes to flying. He can soar hundreds of yards above the earth for hours at a stretch without even so much as a flap of the wings. In advertising, as in flying, it is the steady, majestic sweep rather than the swift, mad flight that keeps things above the ground.-Printers' Ink.

New ideas crowd out the old. The world is very forgetful. An article advertised to-day will be forgotten a month hence, unless it be persistently repeated.

The way your father did may have been excellent in his day, but don't forget this is another age, a time when you must have an automobile gait to keep anywhere near the head of the procession.-Advertisers' Review.

Many beginners try out schemes that have no possible chance of success, as any experienced mail-order man or an honest and experienced advertising expert could tell them. But they do not ask advice, they go ahead, strong in their own ignorance and drop their little money, which might have been made the start of a really successful enterprise.

The advertising matter of the mail-order firm is the backbone of his business. It must be right, it must pull the orders, or there is no chance for him to succeed.Our Silent Partner.

The successful advertiser is the one who gauges his advertising gait just as he does his rent or insurance, or stock on hand, and keeps at it in season and out, rain or shine. Marsh's Advertising Talks.

The Farmer

The Farmer's Wife
The Farmer's Son
The Farmer's Daughter

The Farmer's Hired Man

The Farmer's Hired Girl

are the people you reach when
you place an advertisement in

Dakota

Farmer

Aberdeen, S. D.

Guaranteed Circulation

33,000

Practically all in the Dakotas

If you want to bring your business to the attention of this great army of progressive, wellto-do farmers and their households, you must use the Dakota Farmer, as there is no other paper or combination of papers covering the territory so thoroughly as does the Dakota Farmer alone. Rates and sample copies on application.

The W. F. T. Bushnell Co.

Publishers
Aberdeen, South Dakota

Geo. W. Herbert, Chicago, Rep.,
500 Masonic Temple.

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NNOUNCEMENT is hereby made of the election of MARCO MORROW to the board of directors of the Long-Critchfield Corporation. Mr. Morrow has been associated with the Corporation and a member of the firm for five years, in charge of the literary and catalog departments. In the future he will be at the head of the Promotion Department, devoting his time and energies to planning advertising and sales campaigns and devising special business systems for the Corporation's clients.

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The women of a household spend 90 per cent of the family income.

McCall's

is a woman's magazine.

625,000 Pay For it in Advance.

THREE MILLION READ IT.

They Spend $600,000,000 a Year.

Are you getting your share of it?

The greater portion of this circulation is among the highest type of country
homes, where the most advanced methods of farming are practiced, and
in small towns where fancy gardening and poultry raising are followed.
For Agricultural Advertisers it is the one medium through which to
reach the most progressive and exclusive rural class in the country.
Write for further particulars.

D. L. DAVIS, Advertising, Manager
New York, N. Y.

113 West 31st Street,

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The cost of the advertisements, number of inquiries, number of sales and the cost of each are the factors that decide for the coming months. Each advertiser will come to a different conclusion, and that is the opportunity of the advertisingcarrying publication. While it falls down here, it makes good there. Probably no paper honestly conducted ever made a failure clear along the line in its advertising.

Among the minor points of consideration is that of position. A recent issue of Printer's Ink takes up this question at some length, discussing it as follows:

Much of the energy, originality and knowledge of human nature that ought to go into his copy is wasted by the advertiser in efforts to get his ad into the place where he thinks it will have the best chance of being read. The demand for "position" is unceasing. The word always has attractions for an advertiser, and many a piece of good business has been landed by the solicitor who said, as a final desperate argument, "Well, Mr. Smith, if you'll take a hundred lines we'll give you such-and-such a place, or so-and-so." Some advertisers affect to despise position, saying that they make their copy so good that it will hold its own anywhere. This sounds well, and is good advertising principle. But the advertiser who makes such a statement always reminds the Little Schoolmaster of Artemas Ward, who says it oftenest and seldom prints a Sapolio advertisement anywhere than on the first inside cover of a magazine.

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woman's page, while others who are trying to reach women avoid that page because it carries no live news. Some have a preference for the sporting page. Some want to be on the book page. Yet there are advertisers of men's goods who avoid the sporting page as undignified, while among book publishers there is a sma!! minority that avoids the book page and the special weekly book issue that is now common with all large daily papers. The experience of the newspaper publisher with the position question has taught him some things valuable to know. finds that where the wishes of all advertisers are religiously carried out his paper looks like a crazy quilt and the general effect kills all the advertising and most of the news. He finds, too, that a certain disregard of the advertiser's opinions in the matter of position makes a better newspaper and a better advertising medium. It has now come to be a sort of rule that the stronger the paper the less the publisher concedes. The Washington Star, Chicago News, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Bulletin, and New York World are known as "independent" papers in this respect. They will promise no position beforehand, but retain the right to place an ad where most convenient in the make-up of the pages. This does not mean that the advertiser's wishes are ignored. No promise is given him, but in perhaps the majority of cases his ad has a position that suits him. But the layout of the paper is not weakened by haphazard placing of ads. The Washington Star and Philadelphia Bulletin, by this policy, are able to group many small retail ads on their first pages, making them profitable. If placed as the advertisers wished they would be scattered and valueless.

The weaker the newspaper the more it concedes in position. Solicitors for the weakest paper in a city make a good deal of capital by persuading advertisers in the strong mediums that they are not getting good position. The weak paper carries little advertising, of course, and can give any position desired. The strong paper has a large mass of advertising, and can concede little. Yet it is an interesting fact that the strongest newspapers in the United States are, in most cases, those that concede the least in special position.

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In passing, how did you like that August issue, anyway?

"A Story of Progress"

The article in the August issue of Agricultural Advertising by Frank H. Sweet, should have been given the

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