STAR Safety Razor

You Can't Go Wrong When You Buy A STAR. There Are Five Reasons Why.

1. STAR Blades are forged from the finest Sheffield steel. They are hand made and individually made throughout. You can't get a better blade. They take a marvelously keen edgeand keep it. Many STAR blades have been used constantly for over twenty

years.

2. STAR Blade Clip is self-adjusting It insures always perfect alignment of the blade. No other safety razor has this necessary device.

3. STAR Lather Cup affords ample room for the accumulation of lather while shaving. If you have ever used the ordinary safety razor you know the convenience this means.

4. STAR Frame Hinges make cleaning easy and quick. Fingers are not plastered with lather. Razor is always clean. Simply turn back the frame and run water through it. Then snap into place again.

5. STAR Guarantee means that if you are not satished with a STAR you purchase, you can send it direct to us and have it replaced or your money refunded, as you wish. You take no risk when you buy. The STAR must make good.

If your dealer doesn't sell the STAR, write us PRICE, AS

ILLUSTRATED $3.75

Other Styles from $1.50 to $20.

KAMPFE BROTHERS

8-12 Reade St.

New York City

APPE

BROS

Safety Razor settled before it cared to give consideration to whether a certain safety razor was the best that could be made. The public, then, was athirst for educational advertising, pointing out the shortcomings of the old type of razor and the advantages of this first example of the new type of razor to come. And that was the type of advertising done on the first safety-razor we assume. Or, if it was not, it should have been.

Long since the safety-razor business has put aside its swaddling clothes. Long since has the public come to thoroughly understand and appreciate that a safety-razor's main and sole claim to distinction is its ability (supposed or real) to cut hair without cutting skin. And just as little Willie wants to be talked to like a man when he thinks he is a man, so today the public would consider that safety-razor advertiser ineffectual, if not insulting to their intelligence, who should attempt to tell them wherein a safety-razor is different from an ordinary "unsafe" razor. The public is now athirst for new information more minute.

And so it is that we find the safety-razor advertisers have graduated from copy which is rudimentary in its educational qualities to something more advanced. They now use their space to point out the mechanical advantages

of their own safety-razor over others. In other words, the product of each of them is now a novelty-staple, belonging to a family of staples in a generic sense but having individual characteristics of a novel nature of its own.

And thus today we find the copy for the Gillette Safety Razor reading: "A slight turn of the screw handle gives the desired adjustment. The razor with a fixed and permanent adjustment cannot meet the requirements of everyone." And thus it is, too, to give another example, that a piece of copy advertising the Star Safety Razor starts out: "You can't go wrong when you buy a Star. There are five reasons why," following with an enumeration of those five reasons which constitute the entire advertisement.

And this same evolution from educational copy of a general type to educational copy of a specific and individual type is the history of advertising in almost every line of manufacture. Some dental cream was first advertised as superior to tooth powders and tooth washes; but now it is advertised as superior to other dental creams. Some scouring powder was first advertised as superior to pumice, sandstone, scouring soaps, etc., but today the at

To our mind, a good example is at hand in the case of the newspaper advertising of the Argo Electric automobile, advertised by the Argo Electric Vehicle Company, Saginaw, Mich.

A current piece of copy advertising this company's roadster has been run in the Chicago newspapers not once but time after time. It shows a young man seated evidently at a railroad station. Behind him is a bulletin board on which are scheduled "South Bound Trains." He is smoking a cigarette, from the end of which arises a prolific amount of smoke and in that smoke evidently is pictured the young man's heart-desire, for there he appears in an automobile with a young woman speeding along a country road. The copy begins: "If he had

an Argo Electric Roadster he could reach the country club without annoying delays and much more comfortably."

The fact is that the public now knows and long has known what an automobile, elec tric or otherwise, is capable of. To tell the public that the country club can be reached in an electric is like marking time. It is the sort of rudimentary educational advertising which the manufacturer of the first practical electric automobile should have used to great advantage many years ago, when he had no competition. But there is no need or use in educational advertising of this type on automobiles at this late date.

The sort of educational advertising the public looks for is more of the Fifth Reader type. It does not want to know that the Argo gets you there and then gets you back. It assumes that. But what it does want to know is the Argo's equipment as to batteries, steering gear, tires, seating capacity, upholstery, etc., how made, of what, and being capable of such and such wear and use. In short it wants to know why the Argo is a better "buy" at its price than other electrics at a commensurate price.

Other advertisements in the same series advertising the Argo fall short of the mark in just the same fashion. For instance, one of them presents the startling and new (?) suggestion that one can go to church in comfort in an electric, the Argo being an electric. And another, advertising the Argo Electric Truck, explains that it can run right into a warehouse because it minimizes the fire hazard and does not conflict with the fire laws. Whatever the novelty of that argument, it is far from individual, nor does it apply only to the Argo, but must apply quite as well to any electric truck. And competition is keen enough between electric trucks in these days to make it ill-advised to fight for an industry in general rather than for one's own, individual make of car.

The Welsbach Light Company saw its mistake in playing up the incandescent gas light as a type of light long after it had strong and active competitors into its field. And of late the Welsbach Light Company has been compelled to spend a great amount of money in an aggressive campaign in which it has pointed out how its mantles and equipment could be recognized and how and why they are better.

On the other hand, we would offer two good examples of advertisers who are doing well to stick to first educational principles. Shaker Salt is a new type of salt. Having distinct

advantages of its own, and at the same time having no dangerous competitors or at least none in the advertising field, it is in a class by itself. Some day non-caking salt is going to be a staple when there are a number of such salts on the market. But for the present the Shaker Salt people do well to put their main emphasis upon the advantages of a non-caking salt over an ordinary salt rather than upon the individual advantages of Shaker Salt as a non-caking salt, due perhaps to cleanliness and care in manufacture, lack of adulterations, or the efficient pack

age.

And, to our mind, another excellent example of the same thing is to be found in the case of the Fox River Butter Company, which today is pushing the only nationally-advertised butter, MeadowGold. Today the argument of this company's main advertising battery

is:

well to steer a new course in varnish advertising. Before that time most of their competi tors had launched advertising campaigns along exactly the same educational groove.

Walter P. Werheim, the advertising manager for Pratt & Lambert, was keen enough to ap preciate that his varnishes could appropriate the good effects of the general educational ad

"Butter is good for you; eat butter." It advocates, above all else, the eating of butter morning, noon and night. Meadow-Gold Butter is a novelty not because it is butter but because it is nationally advertised as no other butter is. And, as long as it is a novelty without a host of competitive rivals also nationally advertised, it can do well to create a demand for and a consumption of butter. Later, when competition comes, it will do well to eliminate the "Eat-Butter" main battery and advance to that prominent position, the battery which pours forth the argument based upon Meadow-Gold Butter's points of superiority.

To Dealers:

Gold

Butte

ter

vertising already done to themselves quite as much as any other varnishes, and he saw that they did so without further, unneces sary reiteration. He pointed out the talking points individual to Pratt & Lambert's Varnishes.

"We tried

Says Mr. Werheim: to got something original. We took up the matter of connecting the quality and service idea to Our goods-in other words, we went ahead to individualize our arguments."

Pratt & Lambert began playing up the wearing qualities of their varnishes. They showed that the latter could be hammered with a hammer without cracking, which has since been made an argument with trade-mark effect. They showed people walking with hard heels on P. & L. varnished floors, wet umbrellas wetting them-all without harm.

This latter type of advertising has been educational for Pratt & Lambert's products individually. Needless to state, Pratt & Lambert advertising has been highly successful from the very day of its inception.

And so, too, will be any manufacturer's advertising who appreciates when the public is ready and eager to graduate from the kindergarten stage of educational advertising into what, for lack of a better simile, may be likened to the Fifth Reader stage.