Advertising Problems In Sale Of Export Goods

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30737, 29 April 1965, Page 7

Advertising Problems In Sale Of Export Goods

Under import control in New Zealand, some persons had lost the ability to detect differences in products, said a member of the Government Export Guarantee Advisory Commitee, Mr R. H. Stewart, in an address to a seminar of the Christchurch Young Admen’s Association. Some New Zealand women, under import control, had become tired of seeing the same old clothes “walking around the streets,” he said. The tendency, said Mr Stewart, was for New Zealand manufacturers to feel they were making something good. “But we don’t know how good, and we don’t know how bad. till we get overseas and see what is available,” he said. “Suddenly you find you are not as good as you thought you were.” Mr Stewart was giving an address on advertising for the selling of export goods, in a seminar dealing with different aspects of selling. Artificial restrictions in New Zealand, he said, tended to create a demand for a product just because there was nothing else available. A general frame of mind often existed in New Zealand that products could not be improved in New Zealand because of the wage structure, because hours worked were too short, because the right sort of plant could not be obtained, because raw material was scarce, because labour was hard to get, and because New Zealanders did not work as hard as they should. Overseas buyers had, generally speaking, a surplus of products to buy from. New Zealand would really have to give overseas buyers what they wanted, if it hoped to sell. The biggest thing that advertising men could do was to help create a New Zealand image overseas. “We are almost unknown overseas, particularly as a manufacturing nation,” he said. “If Americans don't

know where New Zealand is, how can we expect someone in South-east Asia to understand?” Mr Stewart said he saw no easy way to obtain export business.

“It is a tough, uphill fight,” he said. “You can’t give up just when you are starting to get a toe-hold.” “Not Enough Research”

Very few persons were capable of helping manufacturers such as himself about advertising for export, but many persons had theories on it. “There is not enough research being done into it at the moment,” he said. “You will have to get your bosses to allocate money to send you overseas to try to get some background into this thing.” Mr Stewart said he had found the best form of selling was the product itself, properly presented. To dress up the advertising of a product, or put in things that were not there, was inherently dishonest, and never succeeded in the long run. “I think you must be very factual,” he said.