Wayside Advertising

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20021, 1 September 1930, Page 10

Wayside Advertising

Several of the newspapers in the last English mail print a letter from the Scapa Society to the Shell Oil Company thanking it for its "continued and "courageous support" of the movement for the protection of the English countryside. The Scapa Society, some readers will remember, was founded nearly forty years ago to " check the " abuses of public advertising," and it will perhaps be remembered also that its most notable achievement .during the present decade was its success some time ago in persuading the three leading petrol firms operating in England to withdraw all their roadside advertisements but those beside garages and filling stations. Now, to the Society's great delight, the Shell Company has agreed to go further, and to remove "all enamelled iron signs visible from "outside the premises of petrol sales"men." If other oil companies follow this striking example, it will begin to be difficult for any firm in England to exhibit signs in rural areas which offend people of intelligence and taste. Most of the local authorities have been given power to make and enforce by-laws by which the dignity of urban, and the beauty of rural, areas can be protected, and publio opinion is growing so rapidly in favour of protection that the Scapa Society feels very hopeful. It is depressing to think that the chief enemy of hope in our own Dominion is the Government itself. While the Advertisement Regulation Acts of England are being enforced with increasing boldness, local authorities here which pass by-laws against hoardings see them broken every day by Government Departments in defiance of local opinion. Tor this there is no remedy but wiser Governments, which we are not yet very skilful in producing; but it should not be unreasonable to hope that even when a Government Department is so foolish as to cater for a public nuisance business firms will be wise enough not to supply it. The object of an advertisement is to persuade people to buy, but advertisements which annoy people are very bad persuaders, and sooner or later drive business away.