CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICITY

Thames Star, Volume LXI, Issue 17313, 28 December 1927, Page 5

CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICITY

PROOF OF EFFICIENCY. EFFECTS ON THE PUBLIC. CHEAPER GOODS THE RESULT. Sir Lawrence Weaver writes in the London Daily Mail: Co-operative advertising by an industry and community advertising: by a town are the sharpest proofs of efficiency. The inefficient dare not advertise, i

Advertisers, whether they are vendors of a food, or a great industry commending its service, or a town proclaiming- its attractions to tourists, do not risk exaggeration; for if they are not as efficient as they-claim to be the public would punish them severely by leaving them alone. But co-operative advertising by industries which give the public good value for their money is always successful—for the industry and for the public. No leaders in an industry spend money in advertising unless they know that the public can and will buy more of their product, if they are only told of its merits.

Co-operative advertising of Australian dried fruits has given the home public better fruit and more of it, has put money into the pockets of the Australian growers, and this money comes back to us to pay for more British manufactures. So here is cooperative advertising seen at work, a fractifying stream which .refreshes British effort at two ends of the world. And it means cheaper goods. We hear much of mass production by great individual firms. Obviously this must apply still more closely in a whole industry which advertises the products of all its members, and so enlarges their joint productivity. The more efficiently they produce in the mass, the cheaper can they sell in the unit. The more efficiently they advertise in the mass—i.e., co-operative-paid by cvmfwyp cmfwyp mfwyp mm l y —the lower will be their selling costs and the lower, therefore, the prices paid by the consumer, whatever the goods may be. Enterprising Towns.

The ideas of co-operative advertising by industries apply with force to the efficiency of towns. *'lf one town has the wit and courage to publish abroad its natural beauties or its fitness as a centre for locating new industries, you may be sure it is an efficient town, with a council bent on enlarging the prosperity of its ratepayers. In the United States the cities vie with each other in proclaiming their merits. So far we in this country have seen such activities adopted mainly by holiday resorts. When foreigners come to Great Britain they are almost as much bewildered as enchanted by our amazing variety of natural beauty and of monuments redolent of the most fascinating history in the world. They ask: "Why were we not told these things before?" But there are millions of our own people who need conversion'ffi'St, ana tnatcan be achieved only by advertising.

When all our industries are organised to tell their story co-operatively, then, and not till then, will the full potentialities of the Home market have been achieved, with a striking reduction in unemployment.