The furniture sentiment

Today’s Memorial Library find:  the magazine Advertising and Selling.  The September 1912 edition features “How Furniture Could Be Better Advertised,” by Arnold Joerns, of E.J. Thiele and Co.

Joerns complains that in 1911, the average American spend $81.22 on food, $26.02 on clothes, $19.23 on intoxicants, $9.08 on tobacco, and only $6.19 on furniture.  “Do you think furniture should be on the bottom of this list?” he asks, implicitly shaking his head.  “Wouldn’t you — dealer or manufacturer — rather see it nearer the top, — say at least ahead of tobacco and intoxicants?”

Good news for furniture lovers:  by 2012, US spending on “household furnishings and equipment” was  at $1,506 per household, almost a quarter as much as we spent on food.  (To be fair, it looks like this includes computers, lawnmowers, and many other non-furniture items.)  Meanwhile, spending on alcohol is only $438.  That’s pretty interesting:  in 1911, liquor expenditures were a quarter of food expenditures; now it’s less than a tenth.  Looks like a 1911 dollar is roughly 2012$25, so the real dollars spent on alcohol aren’t that different, but we spend a lot more now on food and on furniture.

Anyway, this piece takes a spendidly nuts turn at the end, as Joerns works up a head of steam about the moral peril of discount furniture:

I do not doubt but that fewer domestic troubles would exist if people were educated to a greater understanding of the furniture sentiment.  Our young people would find more pleasure in an evening at home — if we made that home more worth while and a source of personal pride; then, perhaps, they would cease joy-riding, card-playing, or drinking and smoking in environments unhealthful to their minds and bodies.

It would even seem reasonable to assume, that if the public mind were educated to appreciate more the sentiment in furniture and its relation to the Ideal Home, we would have fewer divorces.  Home would mean more to the boys and girls of today and the men and women of tomorrow.  Obviously, if the public is permitted to lose more and more its appreciation of home sentiment, the divorce evil will grow, year by year.

Joerns proposes that the higher sort of furniture manufacturers boost their brand by advertising it, not as furniture, but as “meuble.” This seems never to have caught on.

Jonah Lehrer, Niall Ferguson, the lecture economy

They apparently had the same problem — their brand was “person who writes books” but their actual business model became “person who gives lectures for five-figure fees.”  The demands of the two roles are very different.

• Josh Levin on Jonah Lehrer:  “He stopped being a writer and became an idea man”
• Stephen Marche on Niall Ferguson:  “Articles and ideas are only as good as the fees you can get for talking about them”

Ideally, a public lecture should be an advertisement inducing people to read your book and engage with your argument presented in full.  What a disaster if the book becomes an advertisement for the lecture instead.

Update:  Stuff on this theme is all over the place today:  here’s Daniel Drezner on “Intellectual Power and Responsibility in an Age of Superstars” and Justin Fox on “the rage against the thought-leader machine.”  Both pieces are great.

Reader survey: have you ever clicked on a Facebook ad?

Apparently Facebook is said by some to be valued at $75 billion.  Facebook’s revenue, just under $2b last year, derives mostly from online ads.

I visit Facebook most days and was only dimly aware that it had ads.  I just looked, and yes, they’re there:  not on the main newsfeed page, but on my profile page.  I’m trying to get my head around the fact that buying Facebook ad space is a good investment.

Question:  have you ever clicked on a Facebook ad?  Have you ever clicked through and then purchased?

Secondary (or maybe really prior) question:  Does it matter to advertisers whether Facebook users click?  Or is the point just to put the name of the product in the corner of people’s eyes, for brand awareness?

Anticipated objections:  1.  Yes, I know the readers of this blog are not a good sample of FB users.  2.  No, I don’t think “businesses wouldn’t buy ads if they weren’t effective” is obviously correct, though it does carry some force.

Update:  Reader Rod Carvalho points out that the same question applies to Google — so feel free to answer that too!