He paid Mr. Howells $10,000 for his autobiography, and
Mr. Curtis spent $50,000 in advertising it. "It is not expense," he
would explain to Bok, "it is investment. We are investing in a
trademark. It will all come back in time." And when the first
$100,000 did not come back as Mr. Curtis figured, he would send another
$100,000 after it, and then both came back.
Bok's experience in advertisement writing was now to stand him in
excellent stead. He wrote all the advertisements, and from that day to
the day of his retirement, practically every advertisement of the
magazine was written by him.
Mr. Curtis believed that the editor should write the advertisements of
a magazine's articles. "You are the one who knows them, what is in
them and your purpose," he said to Bok, who keenly enjoyed this
advertisement writing. He put less and less in his advertisements.
Mr. Curtis made them larger and larger in the space which they occupied
in the media used. In this way _The Ladies' Home Journal_
advertisements became distinctive for their use of white space, and as
the advertising world began to say: "You can't miss them.
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