WRAPPING PAPER. The use of wrapping paper as store advertising is a practice that is very generally followed, though not as much since the advent of the roll wrapping paper, which, by the way, can be had printed just as well as the sheet paper can. Some stores make it a point to use in all instances a wrapping paper of a uniform color and that color a very strong, prominent one. There is no doubt but that a distinctive color can be made, especially in a small place, representative of a certain store. This, however, is not a sufficient excuse for loading up your customers with bizarre looking parcels which will make them look like walking posters. A man may not always be particular about the kind of parcels he carries, but a woman always is — and then I can understand that a man who himself has for good customers several merchants in the same line of goods may not want to advertise to all the rest the fact that he has just made a purchase from one of them. There is no wrapping paper better than a good quality of white, the so-called cobbassee perhaps, though manila is stronger for larger packages. White with a pink string is always neat and clean. It is as refined as a parcel can be made — and the wrapping of parcels well is a part of the inside advertising of the store. Whatever your business, leave the freak wrapping papers to the other fellow and you will make friends for your store by this means.
As to printed advertisements on the wrapping paper, they should, if used, be small enough to be inconspicuous. This seems like foolishness because an advertisement that will not be seen is not really much good as an advertisement. The trouble with advertising on your wrapping paper is that you want to place an advertisement where it will do you good without making the bearer of it conspicuous. Nobody’s customers want to be turned into involuntary sandwich men. The best solution of the difficulty seems to be the use of plain white wrapping for smaller parcels which are to be carried by the customers and printed manila for the parcels that are to be sent by messenger or carried by people who do not care — anyone who will carry a really big bundle will not mind the printed ad. on it. In a Hardware store the custom is to use what is known as a Hardware paper, strong and tough. As for the ad, itself, the most it can do to advantage is to repeat the name of your store with a view to familiarizing people with it wherever the parcel goes.