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Look at an ad of the Mead Cycle Company - a typical mail order
ad. These have been running for many years. The ads are unchanging.
Mr. Mead told the writer that not for $10,000 would he change a
single word in his ads. For many years he compared one ad with the other. And the ads you see today are the final results of all those experiments. Note the picture he uses, the headlines, the economy of space, the small type. Those ads are as near perfect for their purpose as an ad can be.
So with any other mail order ad which has long continued. Every
feature, every word and picture teaches advertising at its best. You
may not like them. You may say they are unattractive, crowded, hard to read - anything you will. But the test of results has proved those ads the best salesman those lines have yet discovered. And they certainly pay.
Mail order advertising is the court of least resort. You may get the
same instruction, if you will, by keying other ads. But mail order ads
are models. They are selling goods profitably in a difficult way. It is
far harder to get mail order than to send buyers to the stores. It is
hard to sell goods which can't be seen. Ads which do that are
excellent examples of what advertising should be. We cannot often
follow all the principle of mail order advertising, though we know we
should. The advertiser forces a compromise. Perhaps pride in our ads has an influence. But every departure from those principles adds to our selling cost.
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