A HUNDRED MILLIONS

Evening Star, Issue 23048, 29 August 1938, Page 6

A HUNDRED MILLIONS

BRITISH ADVERTISING Mr James Taylor, City Development Officer, of Coventry, addressing the National Association of Local Government Officers’ Summer School at Bangor, North Wales, said that manufacturers, merchants, and traders in Britain spent not less than £100,000,000 a year on advertising. He added that that sum tended to increase each year. It was customary for those convinced of the necessity to advertise to make an advertising appropriation an item in each year’s budget, and more often than not they found it necessary to appropriate more and more. Yet there were still business men who did not advertise, and who said they did not believe in it. “ Let such men make a list of the 12 most prominent and successful business men in this country,” was Mr Taylor’s advice, “or for that matter in any country, and the betting is 1 all Lombard street to a China orange ’ that every one of the 12 will be not merely an advocate of advertising, but one who shows the genuiness of his advocacy by spending large sums in advertising his ow r n goods.” PRESS PUBLICITY THE BEST. Mr Taylor urged local authorities to appoint Public Relations Officers and to undertake municipal propaganda by advertising. “It will be necessary,” he said, “ for us to take paid space in newspapers to give our objects the publicity they need and in the manner we wish to present them. By taking paid space I do not mean that our Public Relations Office should take a small 3in single column insertion in the ‘ Public Notices ’ column. I believe they should, if nccessavv, take a quarter or half or even a full page, illustrate it graphically and have their copy written, as advertising copy is written, with the object of selling the idea they are wanting the people to adopt. “ Take a lesson from the commercial world. Does a department store or a new einema open with a small advertisement? No. A full-page and a fanfare of trumpets tells us of the opening. And, believe me, the hard-headed business men who conduct these enterprises do not spend their money be- ■ cause they like it, hut because they need quick results, and large space in the Press is the only way to get them. “ Whatever scheme of Public Relations vou hope to establish, the Press will be the main plank of your publicity. Press advertising is the quickest way of telling the greatest number.