Ads to Look

When Brothers John & Gardner Cowles Jr., publishers of the Des Moines Register & Tribune, started Look ten months ago they had no idea whether they would sell 60,000 or 600,000 copies. First issue of the 10-c- monthly gravure picture magazine was a 705,000 sellout, and the present 1,700,000 circulation came in generous leaps & bounds as the monthly became a fortnightly. But Look did not decide to accept advertising until three months ago when the Brothers Cowles took Ned Doyle, a wiry, 34-year-old Hibernian, from the eastern advertising managership of Cosmopolitan. Mr. Doyle was given 13 solicitors and sent to sell space, warned not to accept hard liquor, beer or objectionable patent medicine ads.

Last week the first adbearing issue of Look turned up with 10 1/8 pages (some $37,000 worth) from Chesterfield, Dodge, Universal Pictures, Sal Hepatica, Kleenex, Feen-a-mint, other medicinals & knickknacks. Ned Doyle's crew is concentrating on the 1938 schedules, since Look will guarantee 2,000,000 circulation effective May 10, raise its full-page, onetime, one-color rate to $4,800.

In ten months Managing Editor Vernon Pope has had to increase Look's initial budget ten times, so the magazine has netted only $10,000 an issue, all of which has been turned back into promotion.

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