There are no mysteries in newspaper advertising in China, but the new man with home advertising experience has to forget much and to learn much else. Lack of type display facilities may be his first stumbling block for there is no variety of Characters avo of different or may be cut so, but there is no opportunity for one to display printing knowledge in sending copy to provincial papers. Specially prepared zincos from sketched originals solve this problem. One must learn in copy writing that Chinese docs not lend itself in translation to such direct commands as "Do it Now!". He must recall his earlier school-boy training and cay mildly and politely, "Please do it now." (But this is not to be a correspondence course in advertising).
Unless the advertiser has in mind a huge national scheme and is prepared to organize his own advertising department on a scale for dealing direct with the papers, and to handle all the annoyingly vexing details of working through interpreters and translators, he would do well to consult an agency rather than to face the impossible, In preparing copy for translation it should be known that no Chinese reader. is ever in a receptive mood toward advertising, of which he has not (as yet) the least understanding, it never occurring to him that the advertisement is meant og a direct personal appeal. The foreigner is so familiar with advertising from childhood that he reads and absorbs the announcement as a matter of course, cither knowingly or subconsciously, but such cannot be said of the Chinese.
Yet it pays to keep hammering, to repeat your trade-mark and to stress constantly the good in your goods, until both are firmly established, It may take years and the goods must be good goods. To make an impression on so vast a country, requires more time than anything clse—years of time, and patient perseverance, One may do some local advertising hero and there with good results, but to market wares throughout the nation in ited without permission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.