HORIZON

T

Mail Order Advertising

O many persons, otherwise well informed on business topics and familiar with business methods, the very term, mail order advertising, is anathema.

To them it conjures up only visions of cheap-john, catch-penny schemes, in poorly printed "cheap" papers.

Even an occasional advertising man of silken hose proclivities, has been observed to tilt the nose upon the mention of mail order business.

Largely because the fastidious critics use the term in its narrowest and most restricted sense.

In truth, an ever increasing percentage of advertising properly comes under the head of mail order advertising, and it is found in the "high grade" magazines as well as in the ten-cent-a-year-and-apremium-besides publications.

Moreover, the ever increasing volume of advertising is due, more than to any other one cause, to the impetus given by the directly-traceable, tangible results which mail order advertising produces.

For, however great the business man's faith may be in publicity, unquestionably he opens his purse and loosens its strings, with great alacrity when he can see results day by day, than when he feels that he is simply building for the future.

Happy the man whose business is adapted to the mail order method.

then attempts to apply them to specific cases to which they may or may not apply.

For in advertising-as in most other things-circumstances alter cases.

Consequently it is impossible to designate any method, any medium, or any class of media, as "the best" method or "the best" papers for any given line of advertising.

The papers of large, general circulation, of low subscription price and small pretensions as to literary or news value generally grouped under the head of mail order papers, may reasonably be supposed to be "the best" for mail order advertising.

If they are not, they certainly fall short of their aim and excuse for existence, and yet the most ardent and enthusiastic advocate of mail order papers, will not pretend that for all articles sold by mail, strictly mail order publications should be asked to make a showing that will put them ahead of all media of other classes.

It may be that in a specific case the popular magazines will bring the best results—or the farm papers—or the mail order papers, depending entirely upon the article, the price, and the manner in which it is presented.

In other words, and in our humble opinion this is about the only "fundamental principle" that has yet been discovered in advertising:

"Every tub must stand on its own bottom," and every advertising proposition has within it so many "exceptions to the rule" that it can be worked out successfully only on an individual basis.

Col. Hunter in his very able article in this issue of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING makes a sound and sensible argument in favor of the class of publications with