10 cent Gold Mine
10-c- Gold Mines
Mr. Publisher: We have ten million cash-spending customers coming into our stores every weekday in the year. All of them like to read. Would you care to make them the market for your magazines, with no competing publications on our stands?
Many a magazine publisher would be quick to accept such a pleasant proposition. It would solve the question of obstinate news-dealers who put his magazines on back racks, of adverse distribution situations, of competitively owned news-agencies. Just such a proposition became an actuality last week, but only for one publisher, a new publisher. This is how it came about:
A year ago the F. W. Woolworth Co., 5-c- & 10-c- bazaarists, were doing practically no advertising, But bobbed-haired Catherine McNelis, able president of the McNelis-Weir advertising agency (Manhattan), thought they should. She consulted Woolworth executives, told them of a plan: advertise in magazines, arrange with manufacturers of Woolworth-sold articles to advertise at the same time, the manufacturer to pay for the cost of their pages. Woolworthmen at first turned deaf ears, explained that Woolworth windows were their best advertisements. Miss McNelis persisted, reminded them that 1929 was Woolworth's 50th anniversary, suggested the advertisements be made to look like Woolworth windows. The executives warmed up. They accepted a campaign which culminated last April in 16 pages, some two-color, some four-color, appearing in the Saturday Evening Post at a cost of $9,500 for the two-color pages, $11,500 for the four-colored. Miss McNelis and her partner, middleaged, competent Hugh Weir, had prepared the advertisements and, of course, collected standard 15% commissions. Woolworth business increased 25% over May, 1928.
Thus having gained the confidence of Woolworth executives, Agents McNelis & Weir ambitiously toyed with another idea. Why not sell magazines in Woolworth's--not magazines already in existence, but magazines edited especially for Woolworth customers, sold only in Woolworth stores? There was an outlet of approximately three billion persons annually passing up and down Woolworth aisles; people who had come not just to look but to spend. Last year they spent $287,000,000. The proposition was propounded to the executives. This time there were no deaf ears, little hesitancy. Four magazines, McNelis-Weir executed, will be sold in Woolworth stores starting with October issues. Incomplete though details were last week, with author-names still unannounced, with not even the names of the magazines yet ready for publication, some facts concerning the magazines were made known:
The shopgirls, stenographers, penny-wise housewives who make up a large portion of Woolworth buyers will find a 10-c- lovestory magazine, containing all the romance that 25-c- love-loring publications contain.
Night-time readers who, like President Herbert Clark Hoover, keep awake by perusing hair-raising stories of mystery and crime, will find a 10-c-detective-story magazine.
Cinema-goers will find in the Woolworth cinemagazine all the attractions they would expect to find--interviews with famed stars, reviews of famed stars, fiction about fictional famed stars, photo portraits, shots from pictures. The main difference from other cinemagazines will be the price. Woolworth's product will cost only a dime.
Home life will get a separate publication, with illustrations in the Coply print type, hints to housewives and mothers, garden and cellar matters, ice box suggestions, remedies. Like all products making their first bow in Woolworth stores, the worth while will be tried first in fifty new stores. A careful and rapid check-up of trial sales will determine national orders within a few days.
Under the name of Tower Magazines. Inc., Mr. Weir will publish the magazines, Miss McNelis will publicize and advertise them. Managing editor will be a blond, quiet-voiced young man named Kenneth Hutchinson who was once with the Munsey Magazines, once with Publishers McKinnon-Fly. Advertising manager is George Woodward, onetime Macfadden executive.
Publisher Weir contends that the Woolworth magazines will compete with 25-c- magazines, will be superior in form, content, appeal. He promises "good" authors, 100 illustrations in each issue, strikingly colored covers. All are to be standard size (8 1/2 in. x 11 1/4 in.) and contain advertisements of many a product, including those competitive to Woolworth stores. A combined initial circulation of 1,000,000 is guaranteed. The magazines will not be sold in any but Woolworth stores, will have no inside competition from other magazines.