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A test campaign in Philadelphia last autumn made 117,000 Philadelphians buy three packs of Old Golds a week for ten weeks, doubling sales in that area. When it appeared that about half the new customers were sticking to Old Golds, Lorillard consented to go all out on a national contest. Lennen & Mitchell spent a big slice of their appropriation on full-page and double-page advertisements in the first two weeks, then tapered off as the Old Gold contest became an established craze. In Manhattan, Lorillard had to rent two floors of a downtown office building, hire 60 supervisors, 800 stenographers and file clerks, 30 mail sorters to handle an hourly spate from the Varick Street post office —around 350 bags a day.
Only one out of every 100 contestants took advantage of the clause which permitted drawings to be sent in place of actual package wrappers. Sales of Old Gold cigarets jumped approximately 40% throughout the U. S. In the 15 weeks of the contest Old Gold puzzle solvers sent in about 90,000,000 wrappers, presumably smoked 1,800,000,000 Old Golds for which they paid almost $13,000,000. If Lorillard made 1¢ on each package, its profits amounted to about $900,000, of which 40% made on sales to new Old Gold smokers would more than pay the $200,000 in cash prizes and, except for advertising, the contest expenses to boot.
In the last few weeks, Lorillard experienced a small but definite sense of reaping the whirlwind when tipsheets came out with allegedly expert answers to all 90 puzzles. While the correct set of solutions remained stowed away in the vaults of National City Bank, known only to Mr. Hartswick, tipsters using only their brains came very near unanimity on the answers. Beginning of the month Lennen & Mitchell took space in big city newspapers to plead with contestants to "play fair," but the possibility remained that thousands, even hundreds of thousands of contestants would get all the answers right. Against this eventuality Lorillard had provided for two elimination puzzles in case of ties. For puzzles of sufficiently terrible difficulty they relied on Mr. Hartswick. Said he last week: "The worst is yet to come."
Meanwhile, U. S. Post Office Department officials were working overtime to clear the mails of a flood of fake and illegal puzzle contests which had irrupted in the wake of the Old Gold promotion. More than one hint had come from Washington by last week that the opportunity given to fakers by the Old Gold contest would be the last.