DOES ADVERTISING PAY?

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1907, Page 13

DOES ADVERTISING PAY?

OPINION OF A FIRM WHICH HAS SPENT £3,000,000. Mr. T. J. Barratt, the chairman and managing director of Messrs. A. and F. Pears, the proprietors of "Pears' Soap," in reply to the query put to him by a "Dally Mail" representative, "Does advertising pay!" remarked: "I can only answer the question with an emphatic affirmative. The fact that advertising pays asserts Itself in the coloured picture posters which adorn the street hoardings and in the conspicuous announcements which confront the traveller and the newspaper reader everywhere."

Advertising paid, he added, when it was good advertising—when the article advertised was good, when the selected channels for advertising were good, and when the advertising: matter was good. Complete success could not be obtained when there was weakness in any of these -lirections.

Successful advertising dealt with the future. To-day's customers were safe—you had to win over those of to-morrow, and to get them the advertiser had to get in touch with the needs of to-morrow. Tastes and fashions changed, and the advertiser had to change with them. An Idea that was effective a generation ago was flat, stale, and unprofitable nowadays. He had had some supreme successes, particularly in pictorial and art advertising. Sir John MiUais' "Bubbles" painting, which cost £2500, had made a marked and permanent impression; but from year to year it was presented in a new form- Each season had it 6 own plentiful crop of new posters and new Press advertisements. He found no difficulty in spending .-.s much as £126,000 in one year on advertising, and his firm had in all spent not less than £3,000,000.

"Brilliant ideas" arrived by every postNearly everybody seemed to think he was a born advertiser, and every mother that her 'boy was the Image of the boy in "Bub. bles." An astronomer wanted to call a new star "Pears' Soap": so did the owner of a horse entered for the Derby!

"I have seen," said Mr. Barratt, in conclusion, "advertising advanced from the small, half-hearted practice of a few to a great and useful art, in which all business honses can now whole-heartedly join. Those who do not advertise are passed by—they don't get the business. For a long time some of the old houses held back from advertising, but in recent years they have brought themselves Into line with modern methods, and have advertised freely an 3to their great advantage. Those who have stm refrained from advertising have simply had to lag behind, and in many cases go under altogether. Good goods and good advertising, and plenty of It—these are among the most important business factors at the present day."