The visualizer should keep one cardinal point in mind. Keep newspaper
advertisements simple. The less there is in them the better.
Thirty-two of the ads selected by our advertising friend, mentioned
earlier in the story, were good because they were simple. Type was
held to blocks, and with as little change in style, size and character
of type as possible.
All of them were characterized by liberal white margins. It is the
best known way of fighting back the opposition of the surrounding
appeals on the same page.
There's a good test possible. Make a photographic print of your
advertisement, the size it is to appear, and paste it on a newspaper
page--not a New York or Chicago paper, but a page in the "Bingville
Banner."
Before plates are made or even before pen and ink drawings are fully
completed, you can change, rearrange, eliminate, or add to, as the
case may be.
The wise advertiser is the one who in preparing an elaborate and
extensive newspaper campaign keys it in its printing qualities, not to
the best papers on the list, but to the ones that are worst printed.
This may mean the undreamed of thing of 100 per cent perfect!
No advertiser can hope to secure full efficiency from a campaign if it
presents a smudged and confused appearance. Newspapers are trig things
in their own right. Their column rules and their precision of type
make this an arbitrary condition. There is really nothing finer and
cleaner and more pleasing to the human eye than a well-composed
newspaper, hot from the press. Ugly advertisements can make an ugly
newspaper. They can even spoil the set-up and typography in general of
the reading sections.
A newspaper is held responsible if returns from a single advertisement
or a campaign are not satisfactory. It is looked upon as a "poor
medium." Yet how many times the true fault can be traced to the
message itself. Full efficiency in advertising is the result of full
efficiency in the copy....
(Reprinted by the kind permission of The Bureau of
Advertising, the American Newspapers Publishers Association,
Mr. William A. Thompson, Director.)