For instance, when it
gave American women an opportunity to look into a hundred homes and see
how they were furnished, it added a hundred thousand copies to the
circulation. There was nothing new in publishing pictures of rooms and,
had it merely done this, it is questionable whether success would have
followed the effort. It was the way in which it was done. The note
struck entered into the feminine desire, reflected it, piqued curiosity,
and won success.
Again, when The Journal decided to show good taste and bad taste in
furniture, in comparative pictures, another hundred thousand circulation
came to it. There was certainly nothing new in the comparative idea; but
applied to a question of taste, which could not be explained so clearly
in words, it seemed new.
Had it simply presented masterpieces of art as such, the series might
have attracted little attention. But when it announced that these
masterpieces had always been kept in private galleries, and seen only by
the favored few; that the public had never been allowed to get any
closer to them than to read of the fabulous prices paid by their
millionaire owners; and that now the magazine would open the doors of
those exclusive galleries and let the public in--public curiosity was at
once piqued, and over one hundred and fifty thousand persons who had
never before bought the magazine were added to the list.
In not one of these instances, nor in the case of other successful
series, did the appeal to the public depend upon the names of
contributors; there were none: it was the idea which the public liked
and to which it responded.
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