The advertiser should begin his task of selecting mediums with the idea, already emphasized in a pre ceding chapter, that no particular class of mediums is better than any other particular class. It all depends on the purposes for which the mediums are to be used. Some are seemingly good for all kinds of ad vertising campaigns; others are more restricted in their appeal. Whether one medium or another is better for any particular purpose depends on the peo ple the advertiser is trying to reach, the product that he wants to sell and the specific results that he hopes to accomplish with his advertising.
3. Discovering the typical purchaser.—The first thing to do in selecting mediums is to have a clear idea of the people to be reached. Who is the typical customer? Advertising is a mass appeal, and sep arate individuals cannot be appealed to separately. The group alone can be considered, and, before ad vertising to that group can be successfully under taken, it is necessary for the advertiser to have a definite idea in his mind of the typical member of the group. Certain questions are to be asked in es tablishing the characteristics of the typical purchaser, and in the answers to those questions the advertiser often finds that certain mediums are naturally elim inated from the campaign, and that others naturally present themselves as worthy of consideration.
The statement that the advertiser should address r his message to the typical purchaser is subject to one qualification. Sometimes the actual purchaser of an article is not the one who really influences the pur chase. The head of the household actually buys the piano, the automobile, and the talking machine; yet in very many cases he would never buy these things if he were not influenced to do so by some member of the family. The small boy of the family often has much to say about the kind of a car to be bought; accordingly some automobile manufacturers adver tise in boys' magazines. The mother and her daugh ters usually decide what piano or talking machine is to be purchased; therefore these articles are exten sively advertised in women's publications. A few makers of men's clothing, even, have advertised in magazines appealing chiefly to women, in the belief that women often influence their husbands in the mat ter of buying clothes. The typical purchaser, for the
purposes of the advertiser, is the one who induces the purchase of a commodity, no matter whether he or someone else actually furnishes the money to buy it.
4. Geographical is the market in which we wish to sell our goods, national, terri torial or local? If it is restricted to a specific lo cality, we must choose local mediums only. Local mediums are chiefly newspapers and the various kinds of signs. Magazines, on the other hand, are the most commonly used national mediums. A national cam paign, of course, may employ local mediums as well as those of general circulation.
In a local campaign an advertiser may wish to con centrate his sales and advertising activity in one part of a community. He is helped to do this by some newspapers that divide their statements of circula tion so that the advertiser can tell how much of it goes to the city proper, how much to the suburbs and how much to the surrounding country. A few of the larger newspapers even go so far as to indicate on maps the number of copies that go to the various sec tions of the city. Similarly, in the case of magazines, many publishers now provide statements of circula tion by states, to enable the advertiser to choose the medium that goes most intensively into the territory he wants particularly to cultivate. Detailed cir culation statements of this sort are required of those publications that are members of the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
In the geographical study of the advertiser's prob lem the second question is this : ' Is the typical pur chaser to be found in cities, in small towns, or in rural districts? If the purchaser is to be found in the city, the advertiser may use city newspapers, signs, posters, bulletins or street-car cards when the market is lo cal. If it is national, he may use these mediums to gether with certain magazines. On the other hand, if his typical possible purchaser is in the small towns, he may use what are known as "small-town maga zines," and possibly the country weeklies as well. In the country he must rely chiefly on the agricultural and so-called mail-order publications.
Of course, geographical considerations have noth ing to do with the use of direct mediums. They may be used to reach possible purchasers anywhere.