Better Now

The cows destined for Macy's kit bags are not contented. They are thrilled.

Honeydew melons get all balled up and think they're marbles after coming in contact with our fruit and potato bailer. Butter likewise.

Six pieces of imported German Lebkuchen (that's cake, in case your education has been neglected) come in lovely decorated German tins.

Our fruit cake smells so good that the artist who sketched it had to have his hands slapped twice to keep him from nibbling.

A bird's nest fryer is an imposing contraption used for frying Julienne potatoes into the shape of a brown derby. Nobody knows why, so don't ask.

Chatter like this in the advertising columns of New York newspapers is one reason why Macy's sold $99,000,000 worth of goods in 1930. Dating from 1927, this particular brand of chatter helped revolutionize that vast peculiar world known as the department store business. Its heroine is a chic, young spinster named Margaret ("Marne") Fishback who last week celebrated the fifth anniversary of her Macy employment by publishing a book of poems.*

Light and liltish, the Fishback verses are concerned with Manhattanmania's battle between nonchalance and sentiment. They differ from, quite as much as they resemble, the clickings of Ogden Nash or the bickerings of Dorothy Parker. Advertising experience flashes out in catchy titles ("No Traffic Tower to Guide Her," "Quake Well Before Losing"). The Macy influence is plainly visible in "The Fashion Copywriter Turns Nature Lover":

"Gunmetal swallows

Flying here and there,

Honey-beige trees

And sunglo air,

Bronze-nude grass

And silversheen rain--

Beckon me down

A fragrant grege lane."

When Kenneth Collins, one year out of college, quit teaching freshman composition at the University of Idaho he almost entered the Episcopal ministry but decided to do graduate work at Harvard instead. Passing through Manhattan he saw a five-inch, two-column Macy advertisement: "EXECUTIVE POSITION OPEN IN OUR ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT. We require a man of high calibre to supervise and direct a staff of copywriters in the preparation of advertising. This is a key position which offers a creative opportunity and carries with it much responsibility."

Mr. Collins went to Macy's, bluffed boldly about "wide experience," got the job and found it a truly creative opportunity. A year ago he was thought to be the; world's highest paid advertising manager (estimated salary: $200,000). Women read advertisements, reasoned Mr. Collins, so why could not the best advertisements be written by women? His department hired many a feminine copywriter, including Miss Fishback.

The pre-chatter advertisements were simple: Marchioness Boneless Step-in Combination $9.24 or Afore Splendid Values in Macy's Great Annual Towel Sale. Essentially the difference was that the chatter advertisements contained a consciously attained feminine informality.

Among clever Fishback advertisements was one which poked a not-too-gentle finger at rival Saks Fifth Avenue which gladly carries charge accounts. Right across the Avenue from Saks was a wooden fence, hiding Radio City's excavation. On it Miss Fishback saw the familiar slogan: "POST NO BILLS." Out of her observation came an advertisement headed "Macy Propaganda invades Fifth Avenue." A cartoon made the scene of the invasion unmistakable.*

Success has made Miss Fishback less demure and quiet. She talks shop out of shop, also over the radio and from the lecture platform. Wide-awake, observant, she is a normal person with only a few such quaint fancies as Coca-Cola for breakfast. Unashamed of her age, she has on her stationery: "Established 1904." She likes cheap vaudeville as much as she dislikes tennis, bridge and other games. A graduate of Goucher College in Baltimore, she greets Manhattan moods with rapturous surprise, is convinced:

Anything can happen in

This delightful sink of sin.

Anything at all in this

Asinine metropolis. . . .

*l FEEL BETTER Now--Button ($2).

*Of more concern to executives than copywriters is Macy's stand on cash and prices. Famed are the merchandising wars caused in the past by Macy's offer to undersell each & every rival by at least 6%. Lately the store, under pounding from the Better Business Bureau, has made a slight retreat. The once unreserved boast now reads: "It is a Macy policy to sell its merchandise for at least 6% less than it could if it did not sell exclusively for cash."

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