THE REASON WHY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 262, 19 August 1930, Page 2

THE REASON WHY.

WHAT ADVERTISING DOES. Branding or trade-marking goods, and then advertising this brand or trade-mark, 'makes the selling of them easy, and thus less expensive. It is much easiei— and therefore cheaper—to sell a shopkeeper goods for which his customers oome and ask him than to sell him -goods which he will have to persuade them to take. He needs less persuasion. It is not necessary to send travellers to him so often, urging him. to this trouble. We may be quite sure that manufacturers of tea,, coooa, and soap—to name only grocers' wares —do not spend large sums to advertise their brands unless they save larger sums that would have to be spent it these goods were not branded and not advertised. When there is talk of bad trade, and the voice of complaint is loud in the land, such complaint does not come from the makers of branded and advertised goods. This cannot be because branded goods are dearer, or poorer value. It is unthinkable that in all the multifarious trades wherein branded goods are being advertised, and their manufacturers are prospering, the public are being overcharged. The only conceivable explanation is that the'brand o» a purchased article is the consumer's, best safeguard. If branded goods were not better than the other kind, and if customers had not learned, as they have, to be sure of this, the brand would be, not an asset, but a hindrance to trade. The Part of the Purchaser. That brand-names and trade-marks may give their full service of protection to the buyer, it is incumbent upon him to play his part in turning them to account. Lawyers once invented a maxim; caveat emptor, they said in their law-Latin. The meaning in honest every-day English is "let the buyer take care''; let him look to himself, lest he be deceived. Advertised commodities relieve him of the need for this caveat if he will but see to it that he obtains them. The selfinterest of the manufacturer is a better protection for the consumer than his own vigilance in distinguishing the semblance of merit from its substance; and a purchaser untrained in recognising good quality may be deceived for all his caveats, when there is no name or brand to protect him. But this shall avail him poorly unless he takes pains to call for his needs by name at the shopkeeper's counter. He should not ask for plain soap, or.cooca, or flannel, or oatmeal, but for the soap or cocoa of tins maker, flannel or oatmeal with the name he knows, through what he has read in advertising, that he can bank on.