7. Amount spent in different advertising mediums. —The following estimate shows relatively the amount of money spent annually in the United States in a few of the different advertising mediums. While these figures were prepared several years ago, they are to date the latest available estimates.
In volume of advertising the periodicals lead. Newspaper advertising alone, if these estimates are indicative of actual expenditures, represents about forty per cent of all advertising in all mediums, while the various kinds of magazine advertising form about twenty-two per cent of the whole.
8. Letters.—We are to list and consider briefly some of the more important kinds of direct mediums. The first is the letter. A letter written to one indi vidual and sent only to him is properly not adver tising at all. It is personal salesmanship, because presumably the personal characteristics of the re cipient were appealed to when tire letter was dictated. A letter that is duplicated, however, and that goes to a group of people, is properly called advertising, be cause it is an appeal to a group rather than to an individual.
9. Sampling and demonstrating.—In sampling or demonstrating, the actual thing to be sold is allowed to speak for itself. In a sense, sampling and demon strating are a form of personal salesmanship rather than of advertising, because the article to be sold is usually put personally into the hands of the possible purchaser. Nevertheless, these publicity methods are usually classed as advertising because every sample in a lot of ten thousand is usually distributed in ex actly the same way as every other sample; the appeal is really a mass appeal, altho the samplers come into actual contact with individuals.
10. Booklets.—The next group of direct mediums includes booklets, leaflets and folders. Some adver tising campaigns are built entirely on two direct mediums, sampling and either booklets, leaflets or folders. The booklet tells the story more completely than it can be told in a letter. In the booklet one can show illustrations, while this is difficult in a letter. The booklet is one step farther removed from the salesman. It has been said that every advertising campaign calls for at least one booklet. No letter,
periodical or sign can tell the whole story.
11. Catalogs.—The next general group of direct advertising mediums consists of catalogs. The ad vertising of Sears, Roebuck & Company is confined to catalogs almost exclusively. In the beginning of the business this company was a large user of space in periodicals. The number of customers finally became so great, and the company obtained such direct con nections with its patrons that all periodical advertis ing was discontinued, and the catalog is today the only kind of advertising used. The following explana tion of his company's advertising policy was made by Mr. Richard W. Sears a few years before his death : We have simply outgrown the circulation of mail-order journals, farm and religious papers, magazines, and similar mediums, because long use of them to advertise our catalog has given the book a wider distribution than any periodicals we can use. What periodical has a circulation of 5,000,000 copies? Yet we put out that many catalogs a year. Every twenty-four hours 12,000 requests for the book come to us, and we are sending out, at the same time, later editions to people already on the mailing lists. There is no duplication in this circulation. We take every precaution to see that no person gets two copies of the catalog the same year. Every name and address to which a copy is sent is filed geographi cally and every request is compared with this file. When the business was new, we advertised the catalog persistently, but now we do not advertise it at all. Yet we send out nearly 100,000 copies every week. Of the requests that come seventy-five per cent are from people who have an old catalog. Only twenty-five per cent are new.
Matters have gone on to a stage where periodical adver tising no longer pays us, because there are not enough new prospects left in the country to make advertising profitable.
We can't see how to spend more money profitably in peri odicals. Our catalog tells our story so effectively that no amount of newspaper or magazine space could produce the same advertising effect.