5. Social we study our typical pur chaser, we see how carefully the different advertising mediums have planned to reach different groups. The first question in determining the social standing of possible purchasers is: Will the purchase usually be made by men, by women or by children? The second question is: Are the goods intended for the rich, the middle class of people or the poor? There are few commodities that are purchased only by men, or only by women, or only by children. There are few, also, that are purchased only by the rich, the middle class or the poor. The advertiser's problem is to find to which of these classes he is to make most of his sales, and then pick the mediums that seem to circulate most effectively among those classes. If sales are to be made in any quantity to several classes, he must consider each class as a prob lem by itself, and pick different kinds of mediums which will reach the greatest number of possible cus tomers with the least waste circulation.
In fixing the social position of the typical pur chaser, the advertiser asks a third question: Is the purchase made by family groups or by individuals? Vacuum cleaners are seldom sold to bachelors in boarding houses. Even tho it might be advisable for educational purposes to advertise certain articles of household use to unmarried people, an advertising medium going only to unmarried people (if there were such a medium) would be of little value in a campaign to sell articles of this sort.
Still another question is this: Is the purchase made by young, middle-aged or old people? A manufacturer considered a certain magazine an ideal medium for him until it was found that the magazine circulated chiefly among the middle-aged, while his product could be sold only to young people. A fash ionable tailor, who has the greatest portion of the wealthy trade in a western city, says : "While the majority of my customers are men of middle age, have you noticed that I advertise only to young men? When a young man begins to consider tailor-made clothing he has passed the age of to-be-a-man-I-must look-like-papa. He begins to think the old man is a little seedy. Just at that age, also, a father is very proud of his son. I have found that you cannot ex pect a young man's trade just because you hold his father's trade, but that you can often get the father's trade thru the son." The advertiser is fortunate who is able to divide and subdivide the people in his market until he has an exact picture of the typical group to whom he wishes to talk. Perhaps he is selling only to pro
fessional men, or only to clerks, or only to skilled mechanics. Perhaps his product appeals only to mothers, perhaps only to society women. A woman may be both a mother and a society woman. The ad vertiser must decide to which side of a woman's na ture he is to appeal, and pick his mediums accord ingly. If he is advertising to men, he must use me diums that appeal to those interests of men to which his own product appeals. A magazine dealing with out-door sports, even tho circulated only among men, would scarcely be a desirable medium for office furni ture. The ideal medium would be one devoted to men's business interests.
For nearly every group of people there are one or more available mediums, and before the advertiser can determine the value of any medium to him he must discover the particular social group to which it makes its appeal.
6. Circulation statements.—We have been consid ering questions to be asked and answered by the ad vertiser in selecting, first, the kind of mediums to be used, and, second, the particular mediums to be chosen in any class. The remainder of this chapter is concerned chiefly with factors in the comparison of individual mediums rather than in the selection of broad groups of mediums for the advertiser's cam paign. Geographical and social considerations, in other words, help the advertiser to decide whether or not to use magazines, and, if he is to use magazines, whether to use publications that appeal chiefly to men, women, children; the rich, the poor; the young, the old, etc. If he is to use women's magazines, for in stance, these considerations also help him somewhat in choosing from the many women's publications cov ering the field he wants to reach. There are other things to be considered, however, in selecting indi vidual mediums in any group. The things to be studied fall chiefly under two heads: circulation (in cluding rates) and prestige.
The problem of finding the exact circulation of a medium is by no means so easy as it may seem. This fact is partly, altho by no means entirely, the reason for the rather slow development of demand on the part of advertisers for exact statements of circula tion and of willingness on the part of publishers to comply with these demands. The progress of adver tising may be traced by the different stages in the development of accurate and complete statements of circulation.