EVEN MR FORD

Evening Star, Issue 19662, 15 September 1927, Page 4

EVEN MR FORD

FINDS IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE. If there bo one person in the world who, one would imagine, is beyond tho need of advertisement, it is Mr Ford. Yet Mr Ford is now proposing to spend no less than 15,000,(JUlklol (£0,000.0001 on advertising his new car. Mr Ford has discovered that, owing to his neglect ol advertising, the General Motors Corporation has by dint of advertisement’s aid obtained a definite advantage in the fight tor new markets and the hold over the old ones in which ho for so long was predominant. Just as Ciosar neglected the usual precautions of despots because lie had grown so great that ho held tlie world in the hollow ol Ids hand, so Henry Ford, believing that the Ford ears were so famous that they needed no publicity, cut out bis newspaper advertising. 'This clianco was eagerly M*iml by General Motors, which is said to have spent nearly £6,000.000 on newspaper space. Its sales became, such a menace to Mr Ford’s pre-eminence in the cheap car division that Mr Ford announced a new model, and prepared to do battle by means of tiio advertisement which lie bad despised. One car alone, the Chevrolet, was advertised last year to the tune of nearly £1,500,000, and this year will receive publicity to the extent of £2,000, And every time a Chevrolet is sold a Ford remains on the market. The decision of Mr Ford to resume advertising should be the end ot that minority school of business men who believe that advertising is a vastly (. r-ratod means of salesmanship. If Mr Ford, selling a product which is a household word all over the work!, has to come bade to paid publicity, bow much more necessary is it tor the average business company which has something to sell against advertising rivals? In business competition one of the keenest battle is in advertising, and for the business which refuses to advertise there is only one end.

Some of the older generation will remember the names of Day and Martin. In (he world of hoot polish this firm was as pre-eminent as was Ford in tbo realm of the aheap light car. Scruro in its virtual monopoly of tho world, it stopped advertising. It was an enormously solid and well-established business. Yet a small cable message a. year or so ago announced that the firm had been wound up. Lack ot advertising had killed it. The fact has to be laced that solid worth nnadvertised is at a disadvantage ; that nothing, from a war or a religion to a. pine scraper or a tin opener, can possibly succeed without continuous and skilful selling propaganda. It is true that many indifferent things have been hugely successful for a while, owing- to clever and persistent publicity, and that many things tho world has eagerly sought have perished untimely because, for lack of that publicity, tbo world never knew what it sought was on the market. There may appear to he causes and products and ideals too lofty and too famous to need the aid of advertisement, but Mr Henry Ford's attempt to prove it will not add many converts to that- idea. All that be lias succeeded in doing is, in fact, to push home again that grand old business slogan ; “It pays to advertise.”—Svdnev ‘Sun.’