Billboard advertising (Mar 1897)

ON AND AFTER JULY M .8,7, BILLBOARD ADVERTISING. WILL BE KNOWN AS THE BILLBOARD. Vol. IX., No. 2. CINCINNATI, MARCH 1, 1897. POSTERS vs. SIGNS, ie experience with paiut- me ten or fifteen year* I results of sign advertising, and for some three or four years I have been noticing the effects of the same class of publicity on the same classes of goods, only posters were used instead of paint Well-painted signs are powerful, there is no mistaking that fact. For a few days .they are powerful. But after a man (a times be fails to see it anymore. It i there and he continues to pass it, but hi don't see it- He foes along a certaii built, and he sees it, because sees it the first time he passes the wall, and possibly the second and tbethird time. You post a poster on a billboard, and it is seen ; in a few weeks or a month it has become shabby and needs renewing; it is renewed but is put elsewhere—on another hoard or on another part of the same board. If the position of the board is too good to exchange for something else, there is other paper going upon the same board just alongside of your paster, which poster. If your p. board, the new paper used in i being fresher and brighter than it was yesterday, calls renewed attention to your During the many years that I was sel- ling sign space almost exclusively, I. inlmsled, noticed every sign I passed, and every time I passed it. I got to believing that everybody else did the same thing. In fact the people I did business with, being interfiled in signs, did the same thing to a considerable ex- tent. And it was only a few years ago that I got to seeing things through other In '93 toe Adn mote wall and bulletin signs in the city of Now, suppose you have paid out four or five or six hundred dollars for a year's painted publicity, in one of the towns that does not take kindly to your goods; the it does not pay to keep a stock of goods On the other hand, you start in with posters; at the end of thirty days yon have spent say fifty or a hundred dollars. The goods don't go; yon can fly the town or yon can try another method of adver- prominent grocery, or a dozen different methods. Yon are out only the first month's posting bill. If, finally yon con dude that that town won't take your . article yon can get a find it c ■ well To cl <l just about as much as the original painting did. Another thing : If your money is lim- ited, or if you want to advertise a con- siderable portion of the country with a a small amount of money, you can post for one month and omit a month; then time j-on are_ paying only tor the time your paper is on the billboards. Bill posting has in the past been con- 1 on the one-time plan on a year's publicity. I wrote to one man some months ago Tor rates on a year's bill posting. He replied that he "didn't post nobody" for more than 15 days, and his price was 3c a sheet, I finally w> a sheet for 15 days, and 3C a sheet for hcrure by any one advertiser. Iplacedtfae onier and inspected the work, and I know. To people in the trades—the tobacco trade ami the advertising trade—the order was a wonder. Six months after these signs *ere painted and while they were still in goal condition .just aa they had been all' along, I visited the city, and met a young friend who was engaged In the building lin* His business waa such aa to keep . n "» the streets in Ma buggy moat of doing, and I replied that I had a big deal painting Admiral Cigarette throughout the entire country. "The Admiral Cigarette?" he replied, "why they started in here some months ago, but I suppose they have quit Chicago; I never see anything more of them. Some months ago they were advertising enor- When I reminded him that every bit of advertising he had seen in the past was still in the same places, and that one of the sign a was in plain view from ■ or trade name. Yon are in the milling business, we will say, and you have a new flour and you call it Annt Jerusha's Flap Jack Flour. It is a good thing; yon know it is a good thing, for all your friends who have tried it tell you it is a good thing. Yon go into one town and you put Aunt Jerusha's Flap Jacks on the market and it goes like hot cakes. You place i to come along and want space and he could't give it to him, etc, etc. Of course this is one of the towns that must be painted; though some day a bill poster who hasn't been ten years dead will hop in and put np a good service there.) Why does it fall fiat? I dont k New York won't go at all in Philadelphia, or even in Brooklyn, or Jemy City, ,hho. Co., of Cincin- nati, who make a specialty of posters and .hand bills for fairs, want to hear from