POWER OF ADVERTISING

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18406, 13 August 1931, Page 10

POWER OF ADVERTISING

CONVENTION IN GLASGOW. A PRIME NECESSITY. (From a Correspondent). LONDON, June 25. At the Advertising Convention in Glasgow, Mr M. L. Daniels, Nottingham, said that newspaper and 'magazine advertising had proved that it could stand the fiercest test of publicity and investigation. The vast sums now being spent on advertising showed clearly that the all-important results were coming in satisfactorily. The purchase of newspaper space, he added, was frequently the easiest part of a new selling campaign. The one desire of the newspaper fraternity was to assist manufacturers, by every practical means in their power, to come out on top in the great and difficult game of business. Mr C. Harold Vernon, vice-president of the Advertising Association, remarked: "We have got to show the British manufacturer that to sneer at advanced methods of selling is a cheap and childish effort to excuse his own indolence. We are being outstripped by the rest of the world. Can we persuade the manufacturer to call the doctor in?” Cost of Space. Mr W. D. H. McCullough, commenting on the fall in prices generally, remarked that the buyers of advertising space were practically the only buyers to-day who were paying the same prices that they paid last year and the year before. The first paper which could make a reduction in its advertising rates, he asserted, was going to' score heavily. Sound Business Policy. Mr C. Harold Vernon, managing director of C. Vernon and Sons, Ltd., asked in a paper, “Do British Manufacturers Realise the Power of Advertising?” There was little doubt In his mind, he said, that comparatively few manufacturers had a full understanding of that power. They needed convincing that advertising was a sound business policy. "In these days of industrial depression,” declared Mr Vernon, “one does the country no service with pessimistic mutterings. There is money in the country for development If confidence can be established. What is needed is more -advertising, greater effort to -sell. Yet at a time when British manufacturers should be Straining every nerve to 'Stimulate sales the newspapers at their annual meetings are reporting reduced advertisement revenue. If advertising were a luxury this would be an encouraging sign. But advertising is not a luxury; it is a prime necessity, and its neglect is a wilful curtailment of trade development."

The spending capacity of the country might be dormant, but it was waiting to be awakened. The , recent warning of the Prince of Wales relating to the inadequacy of our advertising in South America applied with equal force to the domestic policy of the British manufacturers. “We have got to show the British manufacturer that to sneer at advanced methods of selling is a cheap and childish effort to excuse his own indolence."