HOW PERIODICALS ARE USED 1. Place of periodicals in the campaign.—In pre vious chapters we have listed the various kinds of pe riodical mediums and have briefly shown how they are related to the other mediums that are available for the carrying of the advertiser's message. In this chapter we are to consider more in detail the way in which periodicals are used. The periodical is the great advertising medium. To many people the word advertising suggests only advertising in newspapers, magazines and other publications. This is too nar row a conception of advertising. Direct mediums and signs are just as legitimate and just as important aids in a campaign as are the various kinds of periodicals. For some commodities, direct mediums or signs may be the only possible methods of reaching the buying public. For others, periodical advertising alone may be unable to accomplish the desired result.
2. Kinds of newspaper in vol ume of advertising carried by periodicals are the newspapers. The newspaper is used by more adver tisers, reaches more people, and reaches them more often than any other advertising medium. Newspa per advertising is generally divided into three classes : 1. Local retail advertising 2. Classified advertising 3. Foreign advertising (a) Local retail advertising. Most newspaper ad vertising belongs in the first two classes. There are something over three-quarters of a million retail stores in the United States. Many of them do little or no advertising. The larger ones and the successful ones, however, are usually persistent advertisers, and it is their publicity that makes the average newspaper pos sible. The advantages of newspaper advertising for retail stores no longer need to be argued. The right kind of newspaper advertising pays; thousands and thousands of stores the country over have proved it. If a store is a good store, if it sells good goods and gives good service, only one thing more is essential to success—that the public shall know about the store and what it has to offer. Ordinarily the best and cheapest way to tell the public is thru the newspaper.
(b) Classified advertising. Small advertisements, usually set in small type, of the sort ordinarily known as "Want Ads," are known as classified advertising. These advertisements are usually local in character— positions wanted, positions to be filled, local business opportunities, articles lost and found, etc. Some na tional advertisers, however, have used classified ad vertisements effectively. The fact that the "Want
Ad" columns are carefully read by certain groups of people, results in a sure, even if not always a large.
audience for the manufacturer who puts his adver tising message in those columns.
(c) Foreign advertising in a newspaper is ordina rily the advertising of manufacturers whose plants are located elsewhere than in the city in which the news paper is published. When modern advertising be gan to develop, the newspapers were practically the only available mediums for a national campaign. Then came the magazines, and for awhile the news papers were less used by national advertisers. Of late years, however, manufacturers have more and more used newspapers in connection with magazines and other forms of advertising, and some have used newspapers exclusively. Newspapers offer to the na tional advertiser an effective method of concentrating a sales appear in a desirable territory, either at the beginning of a campaign or after the campaign has started and weaknesses have developed in certain local ities.
3. How vezespapers are used by In selling products of a certain sort, it is often good policy not to attempt to cover the whole country at the start, but to "open up" one jobbing center at a time.
Newspaper advertising may be employed success fully in such a case. The local newspaper cam paigns will probably be supported by sampling and the use of other advertising mediums. Grocery spe cialties are ordinarily introduced in this way. Later, as in the case of Ivory Soap, for example, the greater part of the advertising appropriation may be spent in the magazines. These advertisers, however, keep close track of the distribution and sale of their prod ucts, and whenever they find a city in which per cap ita consumption is below normal, a concentrated news paper campaign is often undertaken in order to in crease sales locally. Altho some national advertisers use newspapers the year around, most of the "for eign" newspaper advertising appears only for limited periods. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, uses newspapers chiefly when there are conventions or un usual gatherings in a certain city, and it is desirable to reach those in attendance in an intensive way. Other advertisers cultivate a local field by using news paper advertisements for a period of a month, two months, half a year or longer.