IN “DEPRESSED” AREAS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3938, 11 August 1937, Page 2

IN “DEPRESSED” AREAS

A NEW ZEALAND MEAT CAMPAIGN. A campaign of publicity for New Zealand meat has met with great success in the “depressed area” of the industrial North-East of England, now happily recovering some of its old prosperity. Four months were spent in the organisation, as the wide area included Tyneside, Wearside, Teeside and other districts covering approximately 4000 square miles, with a population of about two and a half millions. As in other efforts in which the New Zealand Meat Board’s English officers are now so experienced, the retail trade was brought into active participation by means of several window-dressing competitions utilising New Zealand lamb and the Board’s display material; while the school children of many towns competed for prizes given for the best colouring of a New Zealand meat advertisement, all the competitors receiving an invitation to cinema theatres at Newcastle, North Shields and Middlesbrough where New Zealand films were specially shown, the juvenile guests numbering 3,500. Butchers who entered the windowdressing competition numbered no fewer than 200, and when the prizes were distributed, the High Commissioner for New Zealand (Mr W. J. Jordan), although he had only returned the previous day from Geneva, went to Newcastle to meet the representatives of the butchery trade and present prizes. He expressed himself as being delighted with the evidence cf the publicity effort and pleased with the practical form of the campaign arranged by the Nev/ Zealand Meat Board.

Special pages devoted to the attractions of the Dominion were published in a number of newspapers circulating in this densely populated district, a feature of the campaign being a competition among retail butchers for a cash prize for the best advertisement of New Zealand lamb.