Buy a Beautyrest for about 1½ cents a night – in 1949
The same Beautyrest would cost you half-a-cent more – per night – in 1953!
1949 advertisement above from The Saturday Evening Post, April 5 1949, asks:
“Can you afford about 1½ cents a night”for a Beautyrest mattress?
1953 advertisement below from Woman’s Home Companion, November 1953,
ups the nightly cost to less than 2¢ a night!
Here are the calculations
The 1949 advertisement reads:“Did you ever look at it this way? Is a penny and a half a night too much to pay for the healthful, refreshing luxury rest Beautyrest gives you.
Millions of Beautyrest owners say it’s worth more!
Here’s the simple arithmetic of it. Beautyrest costs only $59.50, and it’s guaranteed for 10 years. Divide 10 years by $59.50–and it comes out to only about 1½ cents a night!”
The 1953 advertisement reads:“ Why settle for a mattress that just offers firmness, when you can get firmness AND comfort in a Beautyrest? Beautyrest resists just enough for the posture-right support…and yields just enough for sleep-inviting comfort.
Only Beautyrest offers a choice of firmness: Extra-Firm or Normal-Firm. Ten-year guarantee brings $69.50 price to less than 2¢ a night.”
Compare the images demonstrating the differences
between an “ordinary” mattress and a Beautyrest
The 1949 advertisement uses a simple outline; four years later the illustration is more lifelike but the claim is similar.
The “torture test” of 1949 with the photo of a 275lb roller pounding Beautyrest 740,744 more times than any other mattress tested is downgraded in 1953 to a three line paragraph. But the claim that the Beautyrest lasts over twice as long as the next best mattress test is expanded to two, three and four times longer than any other mattresses.
740,744! What happened when the 275lb roller dropped one more time—the 740,745th time?
Several other posts on our Printing Times website
show how copywriters use unsupported numbers
Palmolive Soap, claimed “36 leading skin specialists proved in actual tests on 1285 women that “Softer, Smoother, Lovelier Skin—that Schoolgirl Complexion Look—can easily be yours. What’s more, these doctors found that Palmolive’s Beauty Plan is unquestionably better for your skin than ‘just average care’ with any leading soap.”
Camels cigarettes claimed that family physicians, surgeons, diagnosticians, nose and throat specialists, doctors in every branch of medicine…a total of 113,597 doctors…were asked the question:”What cigarette do you smoke?” And more of them named Camel as their smoke than any other cigarette.”
Where did those numbers originate? We wonder. But then similar claims can be found in today’s advertising. Nothing changes!
