on the other hand, the sensation advertisement runs to absolute riot. Every contortion and combination that type is capable of is resorted to in order to attract attention. The advertisements are placed at every angle to the letter-press, and disfigure the look of even the first papers in the country to a most marvellous degree. One discovery that Transatlantic puffers appeared to have made is, that iteration of the most objectionable order has a peculiar charm for the native mind. The same paragraph is repeated line after line and column after column without the slightest change or variation, till the classical formula, “Buy the Plantation Bitters,” literally dances before the weary eyes of the reader. I have a presentiment that this fashion will come into grace in England. We shall live to see the day when the “constant reader” will take up his “Times” and see with horror an advertisement, after this form and fashion, sprawling across the page:
BUYBUY
BUYBUY
BUYBUY
BUYBUY
BUYBUY
BUYBUY
and so on, ad infinitum. I can conceive and sympathise with his horror, but I know we must come to that. The rapacity of advertisers respects nothing, and the virtue of newspaper proprietors will not be proof against the assaults waged upon it. Already spasmodic typography is appearing in country papers. The most respectable provincial journals will allow engravings of tea-caddies, and ploughs, and Worcester sauce bottles, to be inserted in prominent positions in the very midst of the regular old-fashioned advertisements. It is very sad, and I would recommend any old compositor, who has saved a little money, to retire from his profession. A good workman who is proud of his work would, I am certain, feel it a bitter humiliation to have to head his page with sensation type headings.
Indeed, I consider that the whole system of advertising is still in its infancy. It is a science which has yet to be studied. At present our knowledge of its rules are purely empirical. Men who have had great practical experience of the subject have assured me that if you have a good article to sell, and if you advertise largely enough, you must make a fortune. It may be so, but my informants have always been the owners or agents of advertising mediums. The traders who have been most fortunate as advertisers, cannot tell themselves to what their success is due. All they know is, that if they leave off thrusting their goods under the eyes, and up to the mouths, and into the pockets of the public, their sales fall off at once. But whether one form of advertisement attracts more than another, they cannot discover. In fact, this branch of the piscatory art is still little advanced. We don’t know what baits to use, or what fish to angle for. All we can do is to spread our nets, and fill them with all manner of flies and worms, and when we draw them up we are sure to find some fish at the bottom; but how many is as yet the result rather of luck than skill. Meanwhile it is also an open question whether the profit on puff advertising is commensurate with the trouble and outlay, even in the cases of the most successful followers of the art. I have heard from the vendor of an article on which the sale was almost all profit, and which he advertised formally through the length and breadth of England, that he had to spend 25,000l. a year in advertisements, to get a net profit of 5000l., and for the first few years he actually lost money. Then, if you begin the system you must go on with it. If the public are once accustomed to see your name thrust before them on every occasion, they think you have died, or retired, or become bankrupt, as soon as you cease obtruding yourself on their notice. I doubt whether a permanent business is often made by advertising; or, at least, I cannot recall any great house of business which owes its position to a name acquired by puffing, and which is now able to dispense with the ladder by which it rose to fortune. This much, at any rate, I am convinced of, that if it were possible to strike a balance between the sums expended annually on puffing, and the profits made by the puffers, it would be found very much the wrong way. However, it is an ill wind which blows nobody any good. The advertisers, not the subscribers, support the press; and if every trader were a prudent man, the public would not have newspapers of the present quality at the present price. So everything, perhaps, is for the best in the best possible of worlds.
ITALIAN SKETCHES.
No. II.
PASS OF THE TORRE DEL CHIUNSE, AMALFI, SALERNO.
