ADVERTISING.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1926, Page 11

ADVERTISING.

THE WAY TO SUCCESS. ADDRESS BY MR. WILL APPLETOtf. "We all know about advertising cess." said Mr. Will Appleton. of Wellington, in an address before the Canterbury Advertising Club the other night, . "What we want to know is how to improve what we are doing, and avoid mistakes in the future. Though I have been in advertising for many years, every day I am learning something fresh." "Pitfalls in Advertising ,, was the title of Mr. Appleton's address, which contained much that was of importance and value to the business man as well as to the members of the club. There was a large attendance, a number of, business men being present. The best advertising, Mr. Appleton said, was that which is absorbed by the public without being conscioue that it is advertising. An advertisement should arrest atention or it may be overlooked, but the reader should never be over-consoious of the means employed. Every advertiser liked to get out of the rut and shoot up a few rockets, hut noise alone would not influence public opinion, because the public in the mass, is conservative. Popular lines dropped out of public favour, but the fault was not the consumer's, but the advertiser's, who may have failed to keep up the quality, or more likely he has failed to keep the J public educated. Advertising required time as well as money, and it was this that made it the safest and best investment. "Because of this," said Mr. Appleton. "few competitors have ■the ruoney, fewer have the courage, and fewer still have the patience to take the time necessary to build a success big enough, and permanent enough to endanger the leadership which your advertising has created." Constant advertising was business insurance, ensuring not only the present, but the future market. Some advertisers were alarmed at the cost of art work and plates, but they forgot that when they , bought spac* they only bought certain blank space, and it was what was put into it that counted. The slight additional cost of a good design, or of appropriate copy, made all the difference between a really good advertisement and a poor one. Space cost money, and the more expensive it was the more necessary it was to fill it to the best advantage. It was false economy to stop advertising when business fell away. When trade was slow (was the time when extra punch should ibe put into advertising, and when it I became most effective. An advertisement I then got more attention because more timid operators left the field to the I enterprising and optimistic advertiser. Experience proved that the trader who went after the trade got it every time— i good times or bad. j ""Wben Mr. Co&tes went to the country last election, what did he do? He went into the advertising columns of the newspapers. That is a sign of the times." Mr. Appleton said, '"and it shows the power of newspaper advertising." If an advertiser was in the principal newspapers of a city he could safely resist advertising schemes of pretty well every other description. In the newspaper the advertiser was reaching the largest possible percentage of possible purchasers, and he was talking every working day in the year in the medium that goes into the family circle, that is part of the family life, and that sustains peculiar intimate relations with the home. People are in a receptive fram;> of mind when they are reading the newspapers, and, if the advertising is properly written, it cannot but incite action. A newspaper advertiser is fortified against allcomers because he knows that he is covering the most promising field intensely and completely.