ADVERTISING

Hokitika Guardian, 19 March 1931, Page 2

ADVERTISING

GREATER NEED OF “SILENT SALESMEN.” “I have never been able to comprehend why a manufacturer who displays an appreciation of modern merchandising by exploiting that powerful sales auxiliary, advertising, should, when turnover begins to fall away during a depression in trade, attempt to bolster up profits by raiding his advertising appropriation,” Mr C. Harold Vernon wrote recently in a letter published in “The Times.” “One frequently finds an advertise) who, through force of circumstances is compelled to exorcise greater oco nom.v, turning automatically to hr advertising appropriation to reduce it, thinkjng that he is saving money. The fallacy is that the advertising department is ranked as a spending department, whereas iit is no more so than is the sales department. If advertising could he accurately credited with the sales R makes, no advertiser would think of cutting clown his appropriation in bad times any more than lie would contemplate discharging hit ‘star’ salesman. A raid on a sciontifi cally planned advertising appropriation does not save money! It borrows at a high rate of interest which will have to be paid in later years to restore the prosperity which the slackening of itlie sales effort has allowed tc pass, and the cost will probably be £2 for each one ‘saved.’ “My personal experience in 1930 as a practitioner in advertising, shows that those business houses which courageously held 'to a progressive advertising policy actually increased their turnover and profits during this depressed period, while close observation discloses that advertisers who steadfastly have used the national Press to give publicity to their manufactures have weathered the storm with greater success than those who have dismissed their ‘silent salesman.’ ”