De venta en los buenos establecimientos
“Local copy in many sections of Latin America is far from our idea of what it should be and may appear a bit startling to our ideas of propriety.... A cognac company uses cuts, posters and large signs depicting the Saviour in the act of pouring out a glass of brandy and saying to Lazarus lying in a coffin at his feet, ‘Lazarus, arise and take a glass of cognac!’”
See page [339]
Position in the greater number of papers is an unknown quantity and its value little understood or appreciated. Those connected with the journal positively do not realize its importance. Even if a definite location is contracted for in your agreement you need not be surprised if the advertisement appears anywhere on any page. This is not done to antagonize you, but is due to the fact above mentioned. Attempts to deduct for wrong position in making payments generally start all kinds of trouble and result in caustic editorial comments. Here as in all things in Latin America, friendship counts, and if you have taken the precaution to get on the right side of the editor and the make-up man, you can have your choice of positions. I know of a representative who was advertising a well known American mineral water in South America three years ago. One of the dailies in which he was doing much display work had just added a new two-color press to its equipment and as he was very intimate with the editor the advertisement appeared in red ink for a long time in the center of the front page along with the foreign telegraphic news, columns being broken for the purpose. No extra charge was made for the service and the owner of the sheet felt that he had done nothing more than exhibit his high regard for the gentleman from the North.
Before preparing your copy for Latin America it is well to study all these conditions and see wherein you can take advantage of them for there is no denying that peculiar opportunities exist which if profited by may mean for you and your firm success in this territory.
Once you have decided upon your copy and the size of the space you intend using, it is advisable to have electro cuts made. This saves time and insures for your advertisement a uniformity of text and type which cannot be guaranteed if the same is to be set up in the office of the paper for each issue. When these electros are to be used in rotation they should be numbered and printed instructions for the foreman should accompany them.
South American appreciation of advertisements “made in U.S.A.”
“They recognize Americans as the best advertisers in the world and not being familiar with English appropriate and use our illustrations irrespective of the fact that they have absolutely no bearing on what they are advertising.”
See page [343]
Plagiarism is rampant. They recognize Americans as the best advertisers in the world and not being familiar with English appropriate and use our illustrations irrespective of the fact that they may have absolutely no bearing on what they are advocating.
Typical of this purloining I recall a well known picture from an American cereal advertisement showing two men seated in a dining car, eating breakfast food. Outside snow is all over the ground and trees; “Smoke El Toro Cigar” is the announcement beneath the sketch and in no place does a cigar appear or is any reference made to one. Whoever selected this picture did not even have the good judgment to modify the same to the extent of cutting out the snow storm, in a land where snow is unknown or eliminating the raised spoons piled high with the cereal and held in the hands of the travelers.
The full page advertisements of Pillsbury’s Flour were bodily appropriated and used by a local cement manufacturing concern. The fact that they also put up cement in bags seemed enough to warrant them in using this copy, although the picture of the cook surrounded by the paraphernalia of his office was not altered in the least.