The Star. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1925. TRUTH IN ADVERTISING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17474, 27 February 1925, Page 6

The Star. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1925. TRUTH IN ADVERTISING.

‘'Truth in advertising” is one of the mottoes of the Dominion advertising men who arc in conference in Auckland just now. Evidently, they took the pledge yesterday, among other things, “ to seek the truth and to live it; to tell the advertising story simply and without exaggeration, and to avoid even a tendency to mislead; to refrain from unfair competitive criticism, anti to set the ideal that truthful advertising builds both character and good business.” This matter is of vital Interest to everybody in the community nowadays, for there is nobody who is not a reader of newspaper advertisements, even if he is not an advertiser himself. Dr Frank Crane, the writer who claims sixteen million readers daily through his syndicated articles, emphasised the fact, in connection with the great Advertising Convention in England recently, that advertising had passed from the region of extraordinary and unusual things into the realm of laws and customs, and that anyone who expected to remain in business must depend very largely on the goodwill of his customers and the fact that his performance was equal to his profession. The old motto. “ caveat emptor ” —let the buyer beware—has passed. Dr Crane wrote. Now the seller defends and protects his customer, it is a part of his calling. The good business man recognises that unless he faithfully fulfils his promise he cannot remain in business . . . Business is made up largely of good will, which has been defined, as the disposition of any purchaser to return to the seller from whom he has purchased before. This good will cannot be obtained unless it is founded \rpon the tact that the merchants representations have always been truthful. Naturally the buyer is sceptical and, notwithstanding all that has been done, he is often deluded by extravagant advertising. The wise merchant, therefore, will take care that his advertisements habitualh* understate and do not overstate hife case. This is the principle for which (lie advertising men stand. They find in advertising a means of promoting international brotherhood, and they say that business should have a code of ethics based on truth and honesty. It is a code that is being adopted more widely by the business community, also, and the result of it is that the public regard the advertising pages of their newspapers nowadays with greater confidence than ever before as an agency through which they may satisfy their everyday needs. The danger that Eastern plagues threaten to Western peoples has been giving a good deal of concern to experts of late, and a conference has been sitting at Singapore with the object of establishing a bureau for the collection and circulation of information of outbreaks of disease. A recent despatch to the Sydney “ Sun ” comments adversely on tlic fact that although Australia was invited to send a representative, none attended. The findings of the conference will he forwarded to Geneva for the purpose of establishing a bureau towards which the Rockefeller Institute has offered £25,000. This bureau, which will be at Singapore, will receive cablegrams weekly from oil governments within the Eastern zone, notifying the number of deaths from cholera, plague and smallpox, and also the presence of any epidemic or disease, whether i( is one for which quarantine is imposed or not. Radio messages conveying this information will be sent oul weekly. This will he a great advance on the present stale of affairs, in which the Eastern ports not only omit to send out notices of outbreaks of disease, but have forbidden the Press to cable information regarding epidemics. The work of the bureau will he of great value to Australia, which, as the nearest white neighbour of the Eastern races, has already suffered from plague and smallpox, and New Zealand might take the lesson to heart, too, by imposing even stricter quarantine regulations than those in force to-dav.