What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Just opened and now read for Sale, by Jolley Allen.”
A week ago I examined Jolley Allen’s extraordinary full-page advertisement in the September 7, 1767, edition of the Boston-Gazette. Given that Allen was prone to inserting the same advertisement in all four Boston newspapers, I noted that he had not placed that particular advertisement in the other two local newspapers distributed on the same day, nor the other one printed later in the week. The expense may have explained Allen’s decision, but space constraints may have played a role as well. The printers may not have been able to accommodate him at that time; after all, other advertisers had also contracted their services. It very well could have been a combination of the two factors, expense and limited space.
Allen’s full-page advertisement did not run a second time in the Boston-Gazette, but the following week a similar advertisement appeared in both the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston Post-Boy on September 14. In each case, the notice contained the same content, the same extensive list of merchandise, but had been condensed to two columns instead of three. Allen shared the page with other advertisers, reducing both expense and space. While the revised format may not have had the same impact as a full-page advertisement, taking up two columns was still an impressive feat that deviated from the vast majority of newspaper advertisements published in eighteenth-century America. Allen’s advertisement eventually ran in the Massachusetts Gazette, again condensed to two columns, on September 24, two and a half weeks after the full-page advertisement occupied the entire final page of the Boston-Gazette. It continued to appear sporadically in some, but not all, of Boston’s newspapers in October.
The two-column version lacked Allen’s signature decorative border in all three newspapers, but it did add an ornate printing device that flanked Allen’s name (itself printed in larger font than anything else in any of those newspapers, with the exception of the mastheads). In the absence of a border, Allen still managed to achieve visual consistency in his advertisements across three of Boston’s four newspapers.
Jolley Allen, a prolific advertiser, did not merely place notices in newspapers. Instead, he developed marketing campaigns that included advertising in multiple newspapers and consistent use of graphic design elements across those publications. He usually launched new advertisements through simultaneous publication in all of Boston’s newspapers, but the ability to do so with a full-page advertisement in September 1767 eluded him. Various factors may have been at play, yet Allen still managed to devise an advertising campaign of much greater magnitude than anything attempted by his competitors in Boston or his counterparts elsewhere in the colonies.