WHY NOT BRITISH?

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 16 July 1927, Page 10

WHY NOT BRITISH?

FOREION MACHINES IN STATE

OFFICES

WHAT AMERICA GAINS BY

ADVERTISING

lit a brief cable message the Empire Alaraeting Board is made to say that ••publicity should be regarded as the last stage "in the scientific organisation of production and economic marketing” (says the Christchurch.” Press’' in a leading article) What this probably means is that the Board has at last recognised the wastefulness _ of neglecting advertising. By a curious coincidence we are told in another cable message that the Board actually uses loreign typewriters in its own oil ice, amt can promise no more at present than that it will •‘endeavour to install British machines when the time arrives.” But the time would have arrived long ago—in the offices, not only of the Marketing Board, but of the whole Empire —if publicity, as a factor in marketing and in business generally, had not been left s-o completely to the Americans. Indeed. Air. Norman Angel 1, who has been writing on the subject recent.y in the “Spectator,” has been able to devote a whole article to Britain’s failure to popularise this very machine, and what applies to typewriters applies to nearly every labour-saving machine which comes at present from the United States. The British are not less inventive than the Americans -—or were not once—and they are no less, efficient, technically, as individuals; Air. Angel 1 thinks they may bo more efficient; but where the American public are immediately informed of technical advances, and immediately interested ir. them, there is “a gull in Britain between the technician and the layman.” It, is the function of advertising to bridge this gull-—and a tremendous Imperial advance if the Alarketing Hoard has begun to see how to do it. Air. Angell found when he went to America- that instead ol having to hunt for the things lie wanted, he was kept constantly aware of them, and of the persons who produced or had them for sale. He found, too, and this is especially worth noting in New Zealand, that besides selling more the more it was advertised, an article in America was advertised more the move it so d. The makers of telephones, for example. though they have Jong reached what would be regarded as saturation point in Britain, go on in America “persuading, reminding, prompting, suggesting,” and paying more I'-or their promptings and suggestings than anyone would dream of spending in Britain, where three teleohoiies out of four have yet to be bought. The Americans have learnt, as the British have not, that it, is “very largely this educational work —-the manufacturer puzzling out and making known new devices which might help the farmer or shopman or office man —which from the point of view of the country’s general prosperity is the most productive form of advertising.” The .Marketing Board’s announcement perlmp.s means that the high cost of production is going to bo attacked where the average English manufacturer never thinks of attacking it, namely, in the void between himself and the consumer.