'EVENING LEDGER-PHILADELPHIA, WEDNESDAY, APlRIL I'd, 1915. "
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THE STABILITY OF ADVERTISING
In any business, the best test of success is re-orders.
With few exceptions, the house that has to get its trade each year from entirely new
customers is under suspicion. If the dealings were fair, and the price right, and if the
goods stood up and proved their quality, the same customers ought to come back and
order again and again.
Apply this test to national advertising.
The evidence of stability will astonish you.
The Ladies' Home Journal in 1914 obtained 86.7 per cent, of its business from the
same customers that bought space in it the year before.
In 1914 The Saturday Evening Post obtained 85.8 per cent, of its business from the
same customers that bought space in it the year before.
Consider the same figures from another angle.
87.3 per cent, of the advertising space in The Ladies' Home Journal in 1913 came
from advertisers who used the Journal again the next year.
In The Saturday Evening Post 87.5 per cent, of the space in 1913 was used by adver
tisers who bought space in the Post again in 1914.
When you compare the advertising business with other businesses, you will see that
this remarkable record of re-orders was made in the face of unusual difficulties.
1 The advertising field is highly competitive. The moment a firm advertises the
fact becomes public. And there are scores of other mediums of advertising into which
the business may be diverted.
2 Space is bought at frequent intervals. The chance of losing a customer presents
itself monthly, weekly, even daily.
3 Advertisers using The Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post do
not sign contracts (except in the cases of those using special positions ordered far in
advance). There isno tie to hold them other than the merit of the space they are buying.
4 The success of advertising is usually dependent upon many outside conditions
over which it has no control. Advertising is seldom the entire cause of success or failure.
5 And in 1914 particularly there were many conditions war, depression, etc.
which might have influenced manufacturers to discontinue their advertising.
Yet these two leading publications held more than 85 per cent, of their volume of
the previous year a volume amounting to millions of dollars.
We take this to indicate the stability, the soundness, the permanence of modern
advertising.
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THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA
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