EMPIRE MARKETING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21315, 17 October 1932, Page 8

EMPIRE MARKETING

Coming as it does on the heels of the Ottawa Conference, the London proposal to hold an Empire marketing and advertising exhibition at Olympia next year is particularly significant. In the statement Mr. Coates made to Parliament on Thursday it was mentioned that New Zealand would in future contribute toward the cost of the Empire Marketing Board, the various marketing organisations of the . primary producers having agreed to make grants for that purpose. Whether the other Dominions will contribute also is not yet known. The facts are that the special circumstances which led to the creation of this body, with the United Kingdom responsible for the cost of it, have disappeared, as Mr. Coates remarked, with the grant of preferences to the Dominions. At Ottawa all the representatives were emphatic that the work it had done was too valuable for its activities to be discontinued. That being their feeling, there is not much doubt about the obligation resting on the Dominions. New Zealand has recognised it practically. If the others act similarly they will be backing their belief that the campaign of publicity for the claims of Empire trade which has been an important part, though by no means the whole, of the board's activities has returned value for what it has cost. Such an attitude and the foundations the board has laid could be an invaluable starting point for the proposed exhibition. Olympia has been the scene of exhibitions of British industrial products intended to oatch the attention of all nations. They have been attended by many buyers, and the results, in the shape of orders, have ! thoroughly justified the holding of J

them. There is no reason why the interests particularly concerned in fostering Empire trade should not achieve an equal success. Foreign countries likely to be affected by the working of the Ottawa agreements show no disposition to remain supine, but are already active to protect the trade' which competes with that of the Dominions. It is for the Empire to prove that the Ottawa Conference was only a beginning, an introduction to the further development of the Empire, commercially and industrially. The proposed exhibition should be a powerful instrument to that end.