188 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



considers too much the novelty end of publicity. I am not arguing — I do 

 not mean this as an argument against novelties entirely — we never use 

 novelties. I mean this, that you do not look at advertising enough in a 

 safe and sane way. The simpler your advertising campaign is, the more 

 concentrated it is, the less forms of publicity that you deal with, and 

 the more money you spend on the fundamental forms of publicity, the 

 better results you are going to get, and it is going to be easier to super 

 vise. 



At the Minnesota state fair we use only two kinds of publicity. One is 

 newspaper publicity, and the other is poster publicity. Poster publicity 

 is used in just its simple forms. Cards, half-sheets, one-sheets, and bill- 

 board publicity. And in the newspapers we use paid advertising space 

 and the free advertising space. Outside of that, I would say there isn't 

 $500 of the $38,500 that was spent last year, outside of the amount that 

 was spent for labor, which was spent for any other form of publicity. It is 

 easier to manage, and it is so simple. You have just two things to think 

 about, and the less things you have to think about the more easy it is to 

 understand and the better results you can get. That is another point. 



Now, there is one other thing I want to speak about and then I am 

 going to quit, and that is this: I am more convinced now than I ever 

 have been that there is only one method of distributing your publicity, 

 and that is what is commonly called the zone system. When I first took 

 charge of the advertising department of the Minnesota state fair the 

 fair was employing what I now call the broad-sea method. They just took 

 their appropriation and blew it, and wherever it happened to strike it 

 was supposed to do the work. There was a sort of false pride attached 

 to it, the thought that the Minnesota state fair was not a state fair at 

 all, but an exposition, an international exposition, and they spent their 

 money as far north as Winnepeg, as far west as Montana, they plastered 

 North and South Dakota with posters and came clear down 

 here into the Iowa territory, east into Wisconsin, and when they had 

 spent their money thusly where was the money that was to be spent at 

 home? 



Now I am going to give you a fundamental principle. Your old home 

 town is Zone 1; outside of that is another zone— we will say go out 15 

 or twenty miles, that is, in the instance of a state fair, but with a county 

 fair we will go out for ten miles, say, and caJl that Zone 2, and ten more 

 miles is Zone 3, and another ten miles Zone 4, and when you get as far 

 as you believe your people are interested, you are going to stop, most 

 of you. What do you want at the fair? You want people to go through 

 the gates at the fair. Therefore work hardest on those that you can 

 impell to go to the fair with the expenditure of the least effort on your 

 own part. When Barnum & Bailey shows reach the old home town, who 

 do they try to get to go to the circus? The people in the old home town. 

 Why? Because they have only to take an hour to go out and come back, 

 and practically the only expense they are put to is just merely the ad- 

 mission ticket to the circus plus any street car fare they have to expend, 

 and the whole thing requires only a half day off. Now, when you go out 

 into the country into your first zone, they have to take a whole day off. 



