PLAN No. 363. ADVERTISING ON FLY PAPER
Most advertising men think they have brought out all possible forms of publicity, but one of them in San Francisco thought of an entirely new idea, and worked it to perfection. His plan was to make and distribute fly paper free, containing advertisements which were also printed upon it free of charge. You can’t see how he could make anything out of that? Well, he saw a way.
He cut thin manilla paper into sheets 10x16 inches, upon which he had printed six ads., each 4x4 inches, and covered these over with a sticky preparation made by melting two pounds of white rosin in a pot and stirring in a gallon of boiled linseed oil until it is of the proper sticky consistency. This he applied with a wide, stiff brush, leaving a margin of one inch all around the edge for handling. The ads. showed plainly through this.
In order to secure the necessary ads. he agreed to print them on 100,000 sheets of the fly paper free, and to distribute the fly paper to all the residences in the city, also free, but to charge each advertiser the regular price of distributing circulars, $3 per 1,000, so that for each 1,000 sheets distributed, the six advertisers paid him $18, and for every 100,000 sheets he collected $1,800 for distribution. The printing was but a small item, and the cost of hiring boys to do the distributing was not very heavy, so he received over $1,400 net profit for a few weeks’ work. He presented an affidavit that the sheets had all been distributed before presenting his bill to the advertisers, so he had no difficulty in collecting the money due under the contracts.