An Interesting Twist on Advertising by Crosley...

I don't have the date handy, but I have a copy of a paycheck form the Evansville (IN) Courier that carries an advertisement for Crosley radios. I believe it was in late 1939 ... probably a good strategy: hit 'em when they've got money!

Powel Crosley's Bird Dogs

In Powel Crosley, Jr.'s heyday--the 1920s and 1930s--it was fasionable for wealthy men to hunt birds (among other animals), often with horses and always with specially bred dogs. The men considered themselves experts in their fields, though in truth they probably weren't as expert in using and caring for a rifle or shotgun as men who depended on guns for their supper. (And there were plenty of those in rural areas.)

Dogs were typically trained by specialists, the owner learning enough to command and work with a dog. (The training was intensive enough that most industrialists would not have had the time to go through the process; hence the specialists.) When he got into the sports in the 1920s, Powel Crosley, Jr. was referred (perhaps by "Boss" Johnston) to a trainer in Jennings County, Indiana. That's what brought him to the area where he built his nature preserve (today the Crosley Fish & Wildlife Area(.

One of his prize dogs was a bitch named Lady Manitoba, handled at shows and meets by W.J. Wilson. Placed at the Sixteenth American Field Futurity held in Sparta, Illinois, on November 4 and 5, 192. Somewhere I have a photo or two of Powel and his dogs. As soon as I can find one, I'll scan and share it here.

There is No "Sole-Surviving Descendent of the Crosleys"

This subject comes up yet again because once again the press is throwing around the statment that G.W. Mcclur is "the only surviving descendent of Lewis Crosley." They were saying that Mac was the "sole surviving desecendent of the Crosley brothers," but I think one or more of the many living descendents of Powel Crosley, Jr. objected.

And there are more descendents of Lewis Crosley, alive and quite well. Nor is Mac the author of the book. He did pay for printing and all the billboards. (Besides all that, what is the descendent supposed to have "survived?")

Crosley Camera: "Vaporware?"

The "Crosley Camera Press Jr. Model" was mentioned in the Crosley story as a product that had been put on the market and lost a lot of money.

My source on that was unreliable, unfortunately. The tale of loss was a fabrication. The Crosley Corporation announced the camera, but never got it into production. It began as an idea presented by someone outside the company. It was going to be a camera with everything, and--in the manner of nearly all Crosley products--it would have something different. In this case, the product would look different. The back would be convex, touted as enhancing the focal length of the lens.

The 35mm camera would, according to Crosley announcements, come with a bunch of extras, including a flash reflector, "steadying handle," built-in flash bulb socket, built-in flash synchronization, built-in receptacle for flash (hot shoe), and more. In the Crosley tradition, one or two "extras" weren't exactly extras. (Rather like an ad in the Cincinnati Enquirer touting WLW's grand opening broadcast as "Absolutely Free!")

The Camera magazine pretty much summed up the situation: "The Crosley camera, much touted in advance ballyhoo, has been removed from this year's market, may appear next year instead ..."

Why didn't the camera make it to the market? Like the Xervac and Reado, the Crosley Press, Jr. Model Camera got lost in the shuffle of the war.

Water-Burning Carburetors

In 1921 and 1922, Crosley’s Americo operation (American Automobile Accessories Company) offered carburetors that “burned” water—the miracle that’s still with us today!

The aftermarket accessories were offered in newspapers and magazine like Popular Mechanics. Do you supposed they stopped selling the gas-saving devices because the oil industry paid them off, like all the others? Anyway, it’s a safe bet that neither Powel nor Lewis Crosley used them with their respective Fords and Cadillacs.

The Simplicity of Radio

In addition to applause cards (detailed in the preceding post), each 1920s Crosley radio came with an 80-page book titled The Simplicity of Radio. Carrying Powel’s byline, this book explained how radio worked, and how to operate and even build a receiver. Perhaps looking for a more cost-efficient means of having the book printed—and seeking yet another promotional opportunity—Powel contacted Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius, a Kansas publisher of small (3-2/3” x 5”) booklets about publishing The Simplicity of Radio in 1923.

Haldeman-Julius was an unusual publisher, a socialist activist who began publishing classic literature in 1919, intent on educating Americans. His press turned out the works of writers like Voltaire, Poe, Jack London, Balzac, and Oscar Wilde under the imprint of “Little Blue Books” and sold them for five or ten cents each. He also published non-fiction books written by experts on a wide variety of subjects, with titles like Typewriting Self-Taught and The Case for Birth Control. They were immensely popular; more than 100,000,000 Little Blue Books were sold in the 1920s alone. (He wrote a bestseller about his marketing techniques, The First Hundred Million, for Simon & Schuster.)

Powel, a voracious reader, had seen many of these editions and knew that they received wide distribution. Haldeman-Julius routinely solicited new works (even though most of his titles were reprints), and Powel contacted him about publishing The Simplicity of Radio. Powel reasoned, correctly, that radio being a new subject of great interest, Haldeman-Julius would want to publish his booklet.

As published by E. Haldeman-Julius, The Simplicity of Radio, by Powel Crosley, Jr., carried the subtitle The Little Blue Book of Radio, and was 32 pages in length. It was one of the few Little Blue Books that did not list Haldeman-Julius as copyright owner. Instead, the copyright notice read “The Crosley Radio Corporation, Powel Crosley, Jr., President.” Powel had learned enough about intellectual property from patents to know better than to give away a copyright.

There were a couple of specific benefits in having Haldeman-Julius publish the booklet. First, the Crosley Radio Corporation could buy copies of The Simplicity of Radio for less than it cost to have them printed locally. Second, the book was a great promotional device, as it featured Crosley radios and parts. It was also a sales tool; anyone who wanted a copy could request one free. And it was serialized in any newspaper that would have it, at no charge.

Powel may or may not received a royalty on sales; if he did, it was inconsequential, amounting to perhaps a fifth of a cent per copy. The important thing was that The Simplicity of Radio went through at least 20 editions between 1923 and 1929, each edition reflecting advances in radio technology. The final count on copies printed was probably several hundred thousand.

If the number of copies in the holdings of various city libraries was any indication, the book was popular. The New York Public Library, the Public Library of Cleveland, and the public libraries of Chicago and Los Angeles each counted more than 50 copies of the book among their holdings in 1925. I have three different versions of this, and Charlie Stinger has at least one more. You can find The Simplicity of Radio on eBay for five bucks or so.

Roaring Twenties Marketing: Applause Cards

Powel Crosley, Jr. was constantly working on ways to promote his radios and WLW. One such promotion was the set of “applause cards” that were packed with each radio. These were pre-printed post cards that radio listeners could send to let a station know they had enjoyed a particular program. There were two styles, each with a small cartoon character applauding or cheering, and lines to write in the name of the program and station name. At the bottom was printed, “P.S. We Own A Crosley Radio.”

Another pair of post cards was for radio buyers to send to friends, inviting them to a radio party. Each illustrated card announced that the sender had just bought a new Crosley radio receiver, and invited the recipient to a radio party in celebration. A dozen cards in all came with each set, inserted in the envelope that contained the set’s operating instructions. (Click on the image above to see large versions of all four types of Crosley applause cards.)

It was an ideal promotion, with Crosley radio buyers helping sell Crosley radios. This went right along with data from recent marketing surveys, which showed that more buyers of new radios were influenced by their neighbor’s radio than anything else.