The noteworthy thing about this advertisement is, that in comparison with the best copy of today, it has high merit. For this early advertisement seems to have embodied in it superbly well those qualifications which modern advertising experts agree are essential requirements for success—measured in terms of sales to the consumer. We shall return to it later.
The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appeared in the form of a "reader" in the issue of The Publick Adviser, London, for the week of Tuesday, May 19, to Tuesday, May 26, 1657. The Publick Adviser was a weekly pamphlet partaking of the nature of a commercial news-letter. The advertisement was sandwiched between a reader advertising a doctor of physick and one for an "artificer," the latter being a ladies' hair-dresser. It was as follows:
In Bartholomew Lane on the back side of the Old Exchange, the drink called Coffee, (which is a very wholesom and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsie, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil, and many others is to be sold both in the morning, and at three of the clock in the afternoon.)
About the time that Pascal opened the first coffee house in Paris in 1672, the Paris shop-keepers began to advertise coffee by broadsides. A good example is the following,[345] the text of which closely resembles the original by Pasqua Rosée:
The most excellent Virtue of the Berry called Coffee.
Coffee is a Berry which only grows in the desert of Arabia, from whence it is transported into all the Dominions of the Grand Seigniour, which being drunk dries up all the cold and moist humours, disperses the wind, fortifies the Liver, eases the dropsie by its purifying quality, 'tis a Sovereign medicine against the itch, and corruptions of the blood, refreshes the heart, and the vital beating thereof, it relieves those that have pains in their Stomach, and cannot eat; It is good also against the indispositions of the brain, cold, moist, and heavy, the steam which rises out of it is good against the Rheums of the eyes, and drumming in the ears: 'Tis excellent also against the shortness of the breath, against Rheums which trouble the Liver, and the pains of the Spleen; It is an extraordinary ease against the Worms: After having eat or drunk too much: Nothing is better for those that eat much Fruit.
The daily use hereof in a little while will manifest the aforesaid effect to those, that being indisposed shall use it from time to time.
The following are typical London trade advertisements of 1662 and 1663. The first is from the Kingdom's Intelligencer of June 5, 1662, and reads as follows:
At the Exchange Ally from Cornhill into Lumber Street neer the Conduit, at the Musick-Room belonging to the Palsgrave's Hall, is sold by retayle the right coffee powder; likewise that termed the Turkey Berry, well cleansed at 30d. per pound ... the East India berry (so called) of the best sorts at 20d. per pound, of which at present in divers places there is very bad, which the ignorant for cheapness do buy, and is the chief cause of the now bad coffee drunk in many plaies (sic).
The Intelligencer for December 21, 1663, contained the following advertisement: