Famous Advertising Quote

Posted by George Clay
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thumb002256 Famous Advertising Quote“Half the money I spend on adver­tis­ing is wasted. Trou­ble is, I don’t know which half.” .….John Wana­maker

From inter­net adver­tis­ing to print ads to direct mail, do you know which of your ads are pulling the most busi­ness? John Wana­maker— an adver­tis­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing genius — strug­gled with this same problem.

In 1876 — a full cen­tury before Wal-​Mart or inter­net adver­tis­ing — he cre­ated the first Super­store in Amer­ica. Call­ing it “the largest space in the world devoted to retail sell­ing on a sin­gle floor”, he focused on high vol­ume and low costs. Indeed, before Wana­maker invented the “price tag”, most buy­ing was done by haggling!

Real­iz­ing the power of adver­tis­ing on con­sumers, Wana­maker wrote many of the ads himself…filling them with con­ver­sa­tional lan­guage that dis­cussed the bar­gains of the day. He was a man of integrity and insisted his ads be hon­est, with absolutely no stretch­ing of the truth. He used money back guarantees…fixed pric­ing (no haggling—-ever!)…and in Jan­u­ary 1878 launched the first ever White Sale. Although he was the first retailer to place a full page news­pa­per ad (1879), he adver­tised out­doors on bill­boards and on spe­cialty items such as pen­cils and bal­loons. His mes­sage got through. By 1881 his flag­ship store in Philadel­phia had almost three acres of sell­ing space on one floor, 46 depart­ments and more than 2000 employees!

But news­pa­per adver­tis­ing was where Wana­maker poured it on . He used bold, con­sec­u­tive full-​page ads which were like news items them­selves. So dom­i­nant and unprece­dented was this method of adver­tis­ing that it became known as the “Wana­maker Style” of adver­tis­ing. The style was copied by other retailers…and played a major role in the rapid rise of inde­pen­dent city daily newspapers.

Whether your adver­tis­ing is online or print, there’s lots to learn from Old John. But his quip “Half the money I spend on adver­tis­ing is wasted. I just don’t know which half” is per­haps the most valu­able les­son. Heed his words. Then read Sci­en­tific Adver­tis­ing. After only a few chap­ters, you’ll have a leg up test­ing which ads are working…and which ones are wast­ing your money.


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