Technology helps print ads get in customers’ hands faster

Long-time advertisers say customers bring ads with them from Record

There was a time not so long ago that when Central Fresh Market wanted to run an ad in The Record, they had to load up a truck with food and drive it to the newspaper.

In the late 1990s, every item the independent grocery store wanted to promote had to be photographed in the newspaper’s Fairway Road studio. Each photo had to be developed on film and carefully laid out on a page. Each ad was written out by hand, typeset, and driven back and forth between the business and The Record for approval.

It was a labour-intensive way to build an advertisement.

“We had products going back and forth, then the proofs would come, then we’d call and make changes. There was a lot of mileage put on,” said co-owner Mike Williamson, who bought the King Street grocery store in 1998.

“We had people running back and forth from The Record because they couldn’t fax them.”

Today, a new ad can be created and approved in a matter of hours. Proofs can be done from anywhere, even sitting on a beach “in Aruba,” Williamson says. That means the grocery store can make a deal with a supplier on short-notice, and have it advertised in the newspaper soon after.

Central Fresh has evolved a lot too, from the 1,500-square-foot, oneaisle operation opened by Bert and Chuck Recchia in 1953, under the name Central Meat Market, to the modern, 22,000-square-foot grocery store that now handles more than 15,000 customers every week.

But while advertising has changed a lot in the grocery business since Central Fresh Market opened in the 1950s, some things haven’t. And Williamson isn’t talking about how a case of pop still costs the same as it did 20 years ago.

“We’ve always been in the newspaper. If tomorrow morning we stopped, and that ad didn’t show up there, our phone would be ringing off the wall,” he said. “For them, it’s their flyer. Some people come in carrying it.”

There was a time when ads were the only images in the newspaper, surrounded by a sea of black text. In the early 1890s, future Berlin mayor Daniel Hibner was running ads for “The Spartan” – he boasted they were the “most improved styles of English bicycles ever imported” – which he sold for $100 out of his house. He illustrated his ads with an engraving supplied by the importer, offering an attention-getting image in the pages of The Record.

In the pre-photography era, advertisers often used stock images to make their ads stand out. If you opened the Berlin Daily Record in July 1893, you would have seen advertisements from the Grand Trunk Railway offering 12-hour trips to the World’s Fair at Chicago, illustrated with a generic image of a train. “When you travel take the best,” they urged readers.

But printing engravings in the newspaper in that era was no simple task. Casper Heller, owner of the Market Hotel in downtown Berlin, frequently ran an advertisement for his business and its “choicest liquors and cigars at the bar.” To do that, he had a sketch of his hotel made, sent it to Toronto for engraving, and then shipped back to Berlin so the newspaper’s printing press could print the illustration.

In the past 140 years, companies have long turned to advertising in the Waterloo Region Record for different reasons.

With 20 greenhouses, an acre and a half of annuals and 8,000 hanging baskets, Belgian Nurseries needs to keep customers in the loop in its everchanging stock of plants and flowers.

Since the 1970s, the family-run business on Highway 7 in Breslau has relied on ads in The Record as a way to reach local gardeners. Back then, the nursery was still a small enterprise, and had little advertising money to spend.

So it began with a small, simple ad one spring to let people know they were open for business. In 1975, Belgian built a greenhouse for houseplants, and turned to The Record to help get the word out.

As the nursery evolved from a wholesale grower into a company largely serving the general public, its need for local advertising has grown. By the early 1980s, Belgian was advertising year-round with the paper, and has become known for its lively, eye-catching ads.

“It just works,” co-owner Rosie Lombaert said. “Our product is very seasonal, and we need to let people know when our products are ready for sale.”

Lombaert said she has stuck to a basic philosophy. The ads should be functional, help customers more easily find what is in stock, and they shouldn’t promote plants that the nursery doesn’t have readily available.

Just like those at Central Fresh Market, Belgian’s customers carry the newspaper ads with them when they visit the store. Through recessions and lean times, the nursery has kept up its advertising, believing it is a core part of its business.

“So many people work on screens all day, they want to have something physical to hold in their hands,” Lombaert said.