PRESS ADVERTISING

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 August 1929, Page 9

PRESS ADVERTISING

MANUFACTURER’S TRIBUTE. Sir Harold Bowden, Bt. (Chairman and Managing Director of the Raleigh Cycle Co., Ltd., and Sturmey-Archer Gears, Ltd.), writes as follows in the London “Newspaper World.”— “What I think” of Press advertising may be best illustrated by the fhet that the companies with which I am associated have spent something like a million on advertising in the newspaper Press, and the expenditure is growing every year. If we did not find it remunerative should we go on? Can newspaper advertising live if the advertisers do not get a profit on their outlay? All forms of advertising have their value but no manufacturer can afford to do without the Press. The newspaper has become .such an intimate part of our daily life. It is the first, line of attack in every proper-ly-balanced advertising campaign. To me it is always a matter of astonishment to see how the daily or weekly interest is maintained. I am afraid we do not give journalists enough credit for it. We take the newspaper so much as a matter of course, that we hardly realise all that is behind it. We expect it on our breakfast table as a routine. If, once in a few years, it fails to arrive, we fret and fume —forgetting all that has has to be done to ensure that bundle of printed paper lying by the side of our plate. And there is always something interesting. Even when we say “not much in the papers this morning” we have still found something to read of interest. Newspapei’ life is hard and I think we manufacturers owe a debt to newspapermen in general which we can never repay adequately. For by maintaining th© public interest in their production they give us a medium of selling our goods which nothing else equals. That is secured by constantly maintaining the “reader interest,” and. I would like them to know that at least one manufacturer desires to pay tribute to their unceasing and successful efforts.