Something of Its Past, Its Present and Future AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING WAS FOUNDED over twenty years ago -for reasons. At that time the farm publications of America virtually were an unknown quantity as advertising media. Most of these farm papers carried announcements of those who had livestock or farm lands to sell with an occasional seed advertisement. That was about the extent of their advertising patronage. Even the manufacturers of agricultural implements did not appreciate the value of farm papers. Nor did the farm press look with great encouragement upon innovations in agricultural tools. Yet all the time the American farmer was developing more and more into a reading, thinking citizen. His chosen farm paper was becoming a more intimate, needed part of his life and his work. * * At this time the advertising agency, of which Taylor-Critchfield Company is the present development, recognized the power of the farmer as a buyer and pioneered the work of agricultural advertising. It then specialized entirely in this field. Comprehending the need for a magazine that should present the possibilities of advertising to farmers and farm families-that should point a way to effective resultwinning methods-this company began the publication of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING. The magazine was regarded as of prime importance by its publishers. It is interesting to note that the founding Editor of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING is the present head of the Taylor-Critchfield Company. Through the influence of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING, and its publishers, those who had goods to sell to the farmer began to seek the publication of their messages in farm papers. Agricultural publications were prevailed upon to accept something besides announcements of horse sales and farm land offers, in their advertising columns. AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING brought together the advertiser and the agricultural publisher for their mutual benefit. In those days not a line of publishers' advertising was accepted by AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING. And it was only when strong arguments later were brought to bear by the publishers themselves, that it was only just that the columns of the magazine be extended to them, it was decided to accept the announcements of a limited number of farm papers of known quality. The publication was increased in size; became even more active and efficient in the work it had begun. These facts about the early history of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING are printed here. and now as a reminder that AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING had a right for coming into existence, just as it has a right for existence today. As the years have passed AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING has broadened in scope to include all forms of legitimate advertising-and merchandising. But it has never lost sight of the fact that the American farmer is the primary source of the Nation's wealth, and of mercantile success. It has never ceased to stand for the best in agricultural advertising. It will continue to cover this field, in which it is alone. In addition, we mean to make it a still better and stronger journal of general advertising help. * Hereafter we shall make this publication of still greater news interest-truthfully the News-Magazine of Advertising. We shall increase its interest and value along Merchandising lines to our utmost capacity. We ask you to read through this number of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING. Note the number of solid, meaty articles it contains-not merely theory, but good practical usable material-written by men who know. And this issue is just a hint of the good things in store. Our editorial plans comprehend several new and valuable permanent features to be inaugurated in the near future. We are rather proud of this number of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING. We expect to be still more proud of the issues to come. Raising the Standard of Editorial WHENEVER A PUBLISHER "cleans house” Whenever an anti-advertising fraud bill becomes a statute— The last few months have been remarkable in upbuilding the legitimacy of advertising as an institution. Different forms of highway robbery that flourished through the use of publicity have been wiped out of existence. It is becoming unpopular to wink at gross exaggeration and countenance deliberate deception. Three-card-monte is no longer an advertising game. The quack medical specialists and the Wallingfords of finance are finding good publications barred against them. Censorship is becoming more rigorous than ever. The price of advertising space no longer buys a license to engage in polite sandbagging. The bell has rung on the nefarious advertiser-and the more quickly he gathers this great truth unto himself the better it will be for him. The result is bound to be a marked increase in the amount of legitimate advertising done. Honest business men, no longer forced to compete with crooks, will gain new confidence. Advertising will be a still better business to be in. And all who deserve will profit in proportion to this steady revolution. The Day of the Dairy INTELLIGENT SPECIALIZING IS THE ROAD to success in farming-as well as in other things. The "cow farmer" has found this especially true. Today one of the greatest and most profitable industries in this country is that of the dairy farmer. Not the dairy farmer of olden times. But the farmer who has the choicest well bred stock, keeps them comfortable and productive, and uses every modern successful means of turning his produce into profit. Besides the excellent publications devoted especially to the dairy industry, every live farm paper has its dairy department. Newest and best ways are described, breeding and feeding advice is freely given. The cream separator of improved type has done its big share in advancing the interests of dairymen. The silo has played no small part. Good sanitation has insured the purity and improved the quality of dairy products. A leading dairy publication lately took a census of its subscribers and discovered the significant fact that the average net value of farms owned by its readers was $17,027.03. Prices are high. It is right that they should be. The dairy farmers of America are entering into a new era of prosperity. They represent a mighty fine opportunity for the Advertiser of quality merchandise. Good concentrated work. IT HAS LATELY BEEN OUR privilege to watch the development of several medium-sized advertising campaigns started in limited territory and developed in close co-operation with publication and distribution interests. We have seen towns literally stormed and conquered by the right kind of thorough advertising and merchandising effort. We have seen consistent localized efforts change a notoriously hard territory into a great selling center. It has been done simply by We know of no better way for a manufacturer who wants to prove his steps, to make advertising demonstrate its power, than a well-planned localized campaign, which at the beginning may be made to include as many or as few towns as desired. It is really surprising what a limited appropriation will do with the right kind of publisher-help and dealer-work to back up the right kind of advertising. Some of the biggest, most successful national advertising campaigns have been started in this way, the selling territory broadened as results came, and the whole country covered profitably, with no risk. Despise not small beginnings-nor the newspapers of medium-sized cities. Real READERS SEE AN ADVERTISEMENT before they sense it. And the first impression is likely to stick. Hence the tremendous importance of good-appearing copy. It ought truthfully to carry a favorable, lasting impression of quality. Yet many advertisers still regard "art work" as an unimportant item--and good art work as a prohibitive expense. The world is full of artists and near-artists. Art work can be bought at a sliding scale-but the lower you slide the more expensive your purchase in the long run. Your advertising should be adequately, appropriately illustrated if illustrated at all. The illustration should do justice to its subject and surroundings. It would be just as unreasonable to fit out your drawing room with costly draperies and rich rugs and then "grace" its walls with cheap chromos as it is to advertise a high grade proposition with good copy and inferior illustrations. Beware of apprentice-boy artwork. There formerly was good excuse for lack of effective advertising illustration. Good advertising illustrators were few. The average commercial artist had a stereotyped style. Commonplace was the custom. Today the country's greatest artists do not consider it at all beneath their dignity to make advertising illustrations and some of the finest examples of the illustrator's art are found in the advertising sections of the magazines and newspapers. High grade men are specializing in advertisement illustration. You can get the illustrations you want, illustrations that have the proper "feeling" of quality. Illustrations that tell the story-throw the proper amount of "atmosphere" around your product. But these illustrations cost money-because they take a lot of a good man's time. And good men in any line are worth their price. An illustration to have value in an advertisement must be a valuable illustration. And, as we remarked before, valuable illustrations are not bought for a song. The Badness of Bad Advertising By SHERWOOD ANDERSON A DVERTISING consists of making impressions. The clothes worn by a salesman, the appearance of a firm's salesrooms and offices, even the brand of cigars smoked by the company's officials is a part of the advertising policy of that firm. Now the worst of bad advertising is not in its ineffectiveness but in just the fact that it is so devilish effective and, one piece of bad copy may set up in the mind of the public an impression that nothing on earth can efface. There is a simple and tremendously effective method by which the advertiser may get this lesson for himself. Most advertising, particularly publicity advertising, is fleeting. The public hurrying past gets an impression, a record is made on a thousand minds, a record, quick, fleeting, but strangely indelible. It is as though you stood on the sidewalk while one after another cars loaded with people who looked at you through the car windows passed upon the street. The next time you are on a street car think of this and for the moment fix your mind upon the scenes that pass before you. A heavy red haired man is running along the sidewalk with a pipe in his mouth. A girl comes out of that corner house with a shawl about her head and with grease spots upon her kitchen dress. A man with a huge mouth throws back his head and laughs. The car goes on. In your mind the red haired man is fixed as one who smokes a pipe as he runs, the girl as one who has grease spots on her dress, the man who laughs as one who has a huge mouth which he opens unnecessarily wide. Meet the red haired man and you will think of the pipe. See the young girl clad in furs coming out of the lobby of a theatre and your eyes instinctively search for the grease spots on her dress. Talk in your office to the man who laughed and you will not hear what he says because your mind is waiting for the huge mouth to fly open. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," is strikingly true of the advertiser when, for the moment, he lapses into bad copy. And the worst of the bad copy, like the bad acting, is not in its ineffectiveness but in its tremendous effectiveness in creating a wrong impression. The Post Office appropriation bill, carrying approximately $283,000,000, an increase of nearly $3,000,000 over the House bill, was passed by the Senate February 28. The measure carries an increase of more than $12,000 over the appropriations made last year, due to the establishment of the parcel post system. |