AN APPEAL TO WHISKY ADVERTISERS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 662, 16 October 1902, Page 21

AN APPEAL TO WHISKY ADVERTISERS.

By

Aster Ye Scribe.

The Philadelphia “ Record,” in a recent issue, contains the following paragraph, which has been given wide publicity by being reprinted in a number of advertising papers :—“An experienced advertising man expresses amazement that so few whisky men advertise, when ' the striking success of those who advertise liberally is considered. He refers to half-a-dozen whisky dealers who have actually made millions through newspaper advertising in the past dozen years. It is simply because of lack of enterprise that so many fail to take advantage of this prosperous time to enlarge their business. It is so with men in other lines of business, who still have to learn that they can increase their dealings enormously by appropriating a part of their profits for advertising.” The views advanced in the above paragraph deserve both consideration and correction. It is true that the sale of two or three brands of. whisky has assumed enormous proportions, due to a very lavish expenditure of money for advertising in the newspapers, magazines, street cars, on billboards and dead walls. It is, however, safe to say that not a single whisky house has, as the Philadelphia •«< Record’s ” authority would have us believe, made millions through newspaper advertising, on the lines of many patent medicine advertisers, who have succeeded on the strength of and solely by judicious advertisings regardless of the actual value of their remedies. That some whisky houses have found advertising a Valuable means of increasing sales goes without saying ; but advertising with them is, and always has been, merely an auxiliary, and not the sinew and backbone of their business, as is the case with patent medicine advertisers. Is it actually tnie that some whisky houses that do not advertise in the news-; papers are losing a chance ? Yes and no! The most prominent whisky advertisers, “ prominent in point of space used in the newspapers,” advertise with the one point in view of keeping their trade-mark constantly before the public, thus forcing retailers and jobbers to constantly keep on hand a full supply of the brand so advertised. Some of these houses use as large space as a full page at one time—the kind of campaign that requires unlimited resources. It is self-apparent that the successful newcomer in the whisky newspaper advertising field would have to outdo his rivals in point of space and ingenuity of display. Only thus could he expect to make any impression on the public, and the gigantic outlay called for by such an advertising campaign would wellnigh stagger any but the wealthiest and most daring among the non-advertising whisky merchants. The doctrine of continuous advertising has, perhaps, nowhere more essentially proved true than in the advertising of whisky. I have in mind a certain brand which four years ago was the talk of the country by reason of the large space it occupied l in the dailies and weeklies throughout the land. To-day you hear it bnt seldom called for, simply because it is no longer heavily advertised. In other Swords, the goodwill of a whisky trade-mark is only enhanced in value by advertising, if such advertising is permanently kept up. The whisky man who would say to himself: u I am going to spend a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand dollars, for advertising my brand; when I have spent that my brand will be so well introduced that I will not have to advertise any longer,” had better not begin to advertise at all, for he will surely meet with great disappointment. The American whisky drinker who is appealed to by newspaper advertising is , about as fickle as the goddess of Fortune. He sees a page ad. of a certain brand, and says to himself, “ Must be ‘ hot stuff!’ I think I will try that the next time.” He will keep on drinking that particular brand as long as he sees a column ad. of it every day in his favourite paper. Once that ad. is taken out for any length of time his fancy for that particular brand flickers low, and his affection for it is readily superseded by another brand equally, well or more generously advertised. Tell the people how to drink whisky. One of the best Whisky advertisements on record is one which contains the advice to never drink whisky except when

, . k! ■ Itii'isteljiss diluted with water. State in which way age improves whisky. Nine-tenths of all whisky drinkers simply buy an aged whisky because it costs more money, but don’t know in what way age has improved it. Above all, impress upon the public the fact that the makers and sellers of whisky are out-and-out champions of temperance, but the sworn enemies, of prohibition, which isdespicable hypocrisy, and which has undermined civic virtue, individual manhood, and uprightness wherever it has been introduced.. It is not more than a generation that tobacco became freed from the shackles of Puritan prejudice. Up to a few years ago there were New England towns where tobacco-smoking in the streets was prohibited, and where innocent cigar-smoking strangers were astounded at being requested to cease smoking. Mr Drake wrote, in 1886, that he knew men then living who had had to plead guilty, or not guilty in a Boston police court for smoking in the streets of Boston. And much of this reform was due to a more or less concerted campaign of education on the part of the tobacco trade. The very New Englanders who first looked upon smoking as a capital crime are now among the most inveterate lovers of the weed. If whisky advertisers will only give a fractional part of their newspaper space to a dissemination of correct knowledge about whisky in general there will soon be a much larger, much more profitable, and much more dignified market, in which they and. the entire trade will share.—“ Bonfort’s W. and 8. Circular.”