ADVERTISING

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 28 November 1927, Page 3

ADVERTISING

BILLBOARDS OUT-OF-DATE. AMERICAN BUSINESS OPINION. Washington. One hundred and forty.one of the largest national advertisers in the country and 16 of the leading advertising agencies have agreed that business can succeed without using the landscape for advertising, and have endorsed the policy of restricting billboards to commercial districts, according to announcement made by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the largest of the nine co-operating organisations represented on the national committee for the restriction of outdoor advertising. The value of newspaper advertising as compared with hill board advertising, is a large factor in this change of policy, according to the letters which the advertisers and agencies are writing to the committee. In a letter to Mrs W. L. Lawton, Glens Falls, N. Y., the federation’s representative on the committee, the J. B. Haines Advertising Agency of Philadelphia wrote:— “We have carefully checked over the various forms of advertising and found that the newspaper and magazine offer the most publicity for the dollar spent—while we have not been able to check any great tangible results from outside billboard advertising. Accordingly, we prefer the newspapers and cannot see why our beautiful landscape shuold be marred by promiscuous advertising.” Quotations from other letters follow: “You may add our name to the list of companies who have agreed that business can succeed without the use of the landscape for advertising.” “My own attitude is that nobody would suffer very much if all printed signs and billboard advertisements were abolished, as there are certainly enough other forms of advertising available.” “We are heartily in sympathy. The beauty of the roadways is an invaluable national asset.” “We realise that advertising which of itself stimulates objections on the part of those to whom it is addressed has very little likelihood of accomplishing its object.” “I believe that I am conservative when I say that an advertiser has the odds very much against him for getting the cost of his advertising back from billboard outside of commercial sections.” >