There weren't any 'public relations' or 'marketing' consultants back then. Only advertising agencies, copywriters and salesmen. Their jobs were more or less intuitive, with the exception of the agencies writing ads for mail-order companies who could (if they would) calculate the returns of each ad to a cent. What these companies could share was the ad agency or a head salesman (what would be termed "sales director" these days), but I doubt it.
These ads really look quite typical for the period. The reoccurance of 'not shoot loose' is an interesting feature though, and really worthy of additional research. Of course, the first things that comes to mind is that the lack of strength was the consumers' biggest concern back then. With lots of JABC's on the market, the concern is understandable.
But when you're dealing with those days before market research, you've got to be careful. Often, the themes for advertising were suggested by the manufacturer, and reflected not the actual consumer's mind, but what the maker thought was the strongest side of his produce. If the makers put most of their money in developing the strongest action, they would insist on the ads making a special point on that, and the marketing person who could say 'actually, the customers couldn't care less for strength' (if such was the case) wasn't there yet.
Alternatively, there's the 'sincerest form of flattery' - a copywriter could decide 'if it worked for Lefever, it's gonna work for us!' and simply recycle a slogan. Interestingly, the last company which used this selling point was the Baker, which, if I'm not mistaken, by the late 1920s was already on the way out.
I can't give a decided opinion on which was the case, it would take knowing much more about how they advertised, what the consumers actually thought, what the gun writers had to say, who wrote their ads, etc. But the more I think about it, the more I agree that it could be an interesting Advertising Research project. Anyone able to come up with a grant I could win to come over to States and investigate the issue?
