THE PURPOSE OF ADVERTISING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21147, 3 October 1930, Page 16

THE PURPOSE OF ADVERTISING

"Advertising does not confer full immunity from price considerations and consequent narrow profits and halting markets, but it does shift the competition to bases of quality and use,” writes James H. M'Graw, a writer with an international reputation. «It puts the battle on the seller’s rather than the buyers ground, but at the same time it proves a boon to the buyer because of insistence on quality. The slogan, ’Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten,’ already, accepted as a principle by industrial consumers, suggests distinct social advantages to consumers at large. “Sound advertising is a remedy for faltering business not alone in spurring the profitable filling of buyers’ present ■wants. We have come to see that the very development of our social structure depends upon the rapid enlargement of needs and the introduction of new products. Through the adoption of production economies, principally the greater use of power and the fruits of research, established industries constantly reduce the numbers of their employees per unit of product. The surplus workers thus thrown off by older industries must be, absorbed into new ones; otherwise we shall have widespread unemployment, lowered standards of living, suffering, discontent. It is the role of consumer advertising quickly to introduce new products to a mass market, and thus.create hew demands for surplus labour. “ The automobile, the motion picture, rayon, and a score of like products could not have been made servants of-our common life so quickly had it not been for the penetration of advertising into every nook and corner of this country and through every purchasing level."