Despite this condition in rural districts, when Sears, Roebuck & Company attempts to extend its field, as it has done in selling a special edition of the Encyclo pedia Britannica or in establishing a new ladies' gar ment department under the patronage of Lady Duff Gordon, it is a most liberal user of both magazine and newspaper space. In such cases the mail-order house advertises to reach a new market which its catalog does not reach and in which its catalog alone does not carry sufficient prestige.
Few advertisers can rely solely on the catalog, be cause few of them have covered their field as inten sively as the big mail-order houses. The catalog is usually a supplementary advertising medium, to aid the salesmen and to turn into orders inquiries pro duced by other kinds of advertising mediums.
12. House organs.—A house organ is a publica tion, usually in the form of a magazine or newspaper, issued by a business house in the interests of that house. It appears, ordinarily, at regular intervals, and, therefore, it might be thought of as a periodical instead of a direct medium. It is properly classified as a direct medium because, regardless of when it ap pears, its circulation is entirely in the control of the advertiser.
House organs are of many different kinds.
The house organ that acts as a direct advertising medium is the one that goes to dealers or to con sumers. Many manufacturers publish more or less elaborate magazines, in the interest of their own busi ness, which they send regularly to jobbers and re tailers as well as to the traveling salesmen and clerks of these distributors. Other advertisers, dealing di rect with consumers, send their sales story regularly to people who might be interested, in the form of magazines of varying degrees of pretentiousness.
House organs are ordinarily used to back up the work of salesmen and the appeal of other kinds of advertis ing; very seldom are they used alone.
13. Novelties.—The next class of direct mediums is known as novelties or specialties. It consists of calendars, pocketbooks, knives, paper weights and a large variety of other articles of more or less utility to the one to whom they are presented. America spends over $30,000,000 annually in novelty adver tising. Novelties are usually given away by the ad vertiser, altho sometimes the possible customer is asked to pay a nominal price for them. A novelty is or dinarily something that will be constantly before the recipient and which will, therefore, continually re mind him of the advertiser. Another element of value is supposed to lie in the fact that the recipient of a novelty, if it is of any value, will feel a degree of gratitude to the advertiser, and will reciprocate by giving him his orders.
Some novelties have still another kind of value. They result in the good-will of the recipient, but they also act as signs to draw the attention of others. Nearly everyone has seen the watch charm in the form of a green pickle, given away by the manufac turer of Heinz pickles. This is valued by the man who wears it, and it also serves to advertise Heinz pickles to others. In the same class is the advertising umbrella and the advertising horse blanket. Prob ably the most effective advertising specialties are those that serve both as signs and as direct mediums.