The Mistake of the Big Steak

Watch out for waste in circulation. Find out where your story is going to be read. Don't pay for planting the seed of publicity in a spot where you are not going to harvest the results.

The manufacturer of soap who has his goods on sale from Oskaloosa to Timbuctoo doesn't care how widely a newspaper circulation is scattered. Whoever reads about his product is near to some store or other where it is sold—but you have just one store.

Buying advertising circulation is very much like ordering a steak—if the waiter brings you a porter-house twice as big as your digestion can handle, you've paid twice as much as the steak was worth to you, even if it is worth the price to the restaurant man. You derive your profit not from the circulation that your advertisement gets, but from circulation that gets people to buy.

If two newspapers offer you their columns and one shows a distribution almost entirely within the city and in towns that rely upon your city for buying facilities, your business can digest all of its influence. If the other has as much circulation, but only one third of it is in local territory, mere bulk cannot establish its value to you—it's another case of the big steak—you pay for more than you can digest. That part of its influence which is concentrated where men and women can't get your goods after you get their attention, is sheer waste.

By dividing the number of copies he prints into his line rate, a publisher may fallaciously demonstrate to you that his space is sold as low as that of his stronger competitors, but if half his circulation is too far away to bring buyers, his real rate is double what it seems. He is like the butcher who weighs in all the bone and sinew and fat and charges you as much for the waste as he does for the meat.