ALL BENEFIT BY ADVERTISING.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19032, 9 June 1924, Page 10

ALL BENEFIT BY ADVERTISING.

r ONE OF WORLD’S GREATEST J POWERS.

SIR ERIC GEDDES SAYS HE HAD TO PAY TO LEARN.

“Advertising is one of the greatest powers of the world,” declared Sir Eric Geddes in proposing the toasts of the National Advertising Society at the society’s sixth annual banquet at the Connaugh Rooms, London, a few weeks ago. “I didn’t realise what it was until I was taught by the public, and I had to pay to learn,” he added. He did not know which were the first advertisers. The tribes of Africa, he had been told, employed persons called p raisers, whose duty it was to proclaim the good qualities of their employers. If the goods were not up to sample they were tortured. This year’s banquet, ho said, came in the year when the World’s Advertising Convention waa to coincide with tho ./British Empire Exhibition. So great, was the power of advertising and of advertisers that he was sure that one half of those who read the newspapers believed that the Exhibition was being held because of the Convention and the other half were doubtful.

BETTER THAN CANVASSING. The man who advertised kept his works going in slack periods, and employed more men when trade was good. “It pays better to advertise than to send canvassers out,” he added. Tho consumer in the end got his goods cheaper through larger output and a consequent reduction in cost. “Everyone benefits, and I cannot see who pays,” he concluded. Lord Riddell, in response, made an eloquent appeal for funds for the National Advertising Society and General Benefit and Benevolent Institution. The advertising business was a comparatively new one, he said. Twenty years ago it would have been impossible to gather together such an assembly of men and women engaged in advertising. “Advertising is no longer the Cinderella of the newspaper world,” declared Lord Riddell. “It is a great and growing national industry, a scientific industry. Engaged in the advertising you have the best brains of the country.” LEGAL IGNORANCE. Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice, said he had been connected for the greater parts of his life with two avocations—politics and law. “Such is the shrinking modesty and the ingrained habit of self-effacemen prevalent among politicians and lawyers that I am in complete ignorance of what is advertising,” he said. He had heard that Sir Edwsrd Mar-shall-Hall at the Old Bailey said that it didn’t matter how much you spent on advertising, if you had a good article you got it all back again. “I wonder who told him that,” added Lord Hewart.

Nearly £5,000 was raised for the funds of the Society as a result of the banquet.