“TELLING THE WORLD.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 663, 17 January 1933, Page 8

“TELLING THE WORLD.”

A Comprehensive Analysis of Advertising.

In the course of a recent radio talk, Dr Julius Klein, assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce, stressed the importance of advertising “ as one of the most valued agencies in our whole business organisation in regenerating confidence.” After mentioning the big campaigns released in America during 1932, Dr Klein referred to a recent study by the Adt-ertising Federation of America which shoAved dramatically just hoAv indispensable a tool adA-ertising has become for the far-sighted business man. The federation’s analysts studied the records of 120 corporations, and they Avent back over a seventeen-year period. Sixty of the companies Avhose records Avere analysed had been consistent in their advertising a\-er the seventeen-year period, steadily increasing their expenditures each year over the year before. Every one of these companies to-day is among the leaders in its field in the United States, although seventeen years ago some ot them were struggling along to keep a foothold on a slippery path of success. This group of successful companies spent more for adA-ertising in 1930 and 1931 than in the two preceding boom years, and it is Avorth mentioning that in 1931 their profits approximated the aA-erage for the preceding fit'e years. AdA*ertising did not do it entirely; the products these firms Avere manufacturing or selling had to be good and fairly priced, or their customers Avould not have continued to buy them in steadily increasing volume, no matter hoAv vigorously they Avere advertised; but jn every one of these sixty cases a consistent and Avell-planned advertising policy played an absolutely essential part in placing the firms in the secure positions they hold to-day. That is especially Avell demonstrated when we compare the course taken by those firms with that of the other sixty companies studied by the federation. They Avere all advertisers, too, but not consistent adA-ertisers. When business Avas good they would adA'ertise heaA-ily, but Avhen a slack period came they Avould radically curtail their publicity programmes. Noav, in contrast Avith the other group, all of these organisations, seA-enteen years ago, Avere among the important American businesses. To-day one-fifth of them haA-e either gone out of business or are operating on a very restricted basis. Less than half the firms in the group ha\-e retained anything like the prestige they enjoyed seventeen yars ago.