A rough plan should be formulated dividing the store—whether drapery, furnishing or general—into various sections and sub-sections, and every penny expended should be debited to its own particular section, and results gauged thereby. If the expenditure through the whole store is simply lumped in one sum and the-result taken as a whole, it is quite possible that there are some departments which are not paying for their advertising. Some departments may have received too much publicity, and have not shown a profit on that account ; and others, on the other hand, may not have received enough, and have not been given the necessary impetus to make profitable sale. The centralisation of work, therefore, under department heads will do much to do away with this. In this connection it will be seen again that the advertising manager or retained expert is very necessary indeed in a large retail estab lishinent. In the first place, he should be in close touch with the buyers of goods from time to time, and should know when special lines have been purchased. His experience will enable him to tell with a fair degree of accuracy whether a certain line of goods will have a favourable reception from the hands of the public, and on this account, therefore, he should be in con stant daily touch with the buyers from the various departments. Quite apart from this, he should also be close in touch with the heads of the selling departments, who will report to him daily the reception that certain lines are getting from the public. The department heads should be allowed to indi cate their desires regarding the lines they wish to be pushed, although the publicity manager should finally arrange what amount of publicity should be given to these goods. Whatever money is spent, however, in each department should be entered up against that department, and results gauged thereby. If one particular department shows a continual weakness, if after it has received more than its share of advertising revenue it still indicates a tendency to lag behind, there is some fault somewhere—in all probability in the goods; they may have been bought, for instance, at the wrong prices. It is only by gathering this data together that a test can be made. With data carefully gathered from day to day and kept up in an up-to-date form, the advertising manager is enabled to direct his advertising expenditure into the most profitable channels. And furthermore, when satisfactory results are shown in any particular line of goods—results of such a character as would indicate that they would speedily be cleared out of the house—it would obviously be unwise to go on advertising that line. This advertising depart ment, in short, should be organised so as to disclose the direction in which advertising expenditure would most probably prove profitable.
The daily paper undoubtedly offers the most profitable field for the retail advertiser to exploit. This is a fact that has been recognised for some con siderable time in America, although the recognition of the large English retailers has been somewhat tardy. Much has been done, however, of late years in this country to alter this, and it will be found that many large drapers and general department stores are using the dailies much more freely than was the case some years ago, and their continuance to use them seems to argue that they have found the daily paper a profitable medium. The reason is not a very abstruse one, as it is fairly obvious that as fashions change so frequently, and the needs of the people are almost of daily occurrence, the daily paper is the best medium to use.
Quick action is required. Four or five wet days in succession would prove a fruitful time to advertise mackintoshes and waterproofs, whereas money spent to push light blouses would be wasted. The retail advertiser requires a medium that he can use at twenty-four hours' notice : the daily paper supplies that want.
The copy which should be used by retail advertisers, great or small, is of a much more stereotyped nature than that which is used by the general or mail order advertiser.
Retail advertising, so far as copy is concerned, practically amounts to a repetition of a portion of the retail house's catalogue. The retail adver tiser places before the purchasing public the articles he to sell, a description of them, and what is more important, the price of them. It is generally e-enerally accepted fact that price plays the most important part in retail advertising. The retail advertiser should deal with the articles he desires to sell item by item, and his advertising treatment of each article should be simplicity itself. He is about to advertise, amongst other things, for in stance, an easy-chair. He simply gives a full description of that easy-chair, states what it is made of, how it is upholstered, and names its price. If it happens to be a bargain offer, he gives his reason why he is enabled to make a sweeping reduction in this instance. Whatever the size of the space he is using, the treatment should be exactly the same ; the number of items advertised is measured in accordance with the size of the space occupied. While, for instance, he may take large space, such as a full page, he might advertise fifty or sixty or even two or three hundred different items, but the treatment of the whole would be exactly the same as the one item. It will be seen, therefore, there is no great field for any great originality in retail advertising. It does not call for the same literary and artistic skill as general advertising. This is one of the reasons that the retail advertiser finds it easier to retain his own advertising specialist, since the same amount of ability is not expected from him. A typical English retail store adver tisement is that of example No. 1, Messrs. Swan & Edgar. Various articles are taken one by one ; they are displayed in the form of blocks, and the description follows with the price. Although it may be regarded as an excellent example of retail store advertising, it does not go quite far enough, insomuch as it does not give any reason why these particular offers are in any way bargains.
Example No. 2 is a typical New York departmental store full-page advertisement. It differs from the English type insomuch as it does not dis play the actual representation of the articles offered, but gives a fuller descrip tion of them. Here also the price plays a great part in the advertisement.
The general appearance of retail advertising is a matter which deserves consideration. It should be made very clear and legible and not in any way confused. It should, in other words, invite the eye, rather than confuse the eye.
An example of a confused advertisement is that of No. 3, Jay's, an English furnishing store,, This advertisement gives blocks of the articles to be sold, but does not de scribe them at all. Itsimply gives the price with no introductory matter. The advertisement looks confused, and does not readily in vite attention on this account.