ON ADVERTISING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5501, 15 November 1929, Page 2

ON ADVERTISING.

VALUE OF THE NEWSPAPER. LONDON EDITORIAL COMMENT. “The British trader is at last awakening to the immense significance of newspaper- advertising,” states an editorial in the London “Daily Mail” of September 18 last. “He was very slow to make the discovery. He knew his wares were of the best, and if possible customers did not find that out for themselves so much the worse for them. *<le shows a distinct and salutary tendency to change this attitude. It is being realised that there is nothing improper or undignified in giving the public information as to where and what and how it should buy. Advertising, if it , is to succeed, is not an attempt to persuade, people to pay high prices for worthless articles. On the contrary its aim is to show how the potential purchaser can get his legitimate wants satisfied on the most favourable terms.

“The modern trader is beginning to understand the part that suggestion plays in our restless, preoccupied age. We must have our attention kept alive and properly directed. This is why community advertising has been so often found useful for many business, public, and social movements. Great is the power of an appropriate with good sense behind it. “There was a conference of meat traders yesterday, and one of the speakers urged that advertising on a national scale should be inaugurated. If the meat traders contributed they were told that they would make a handsome profit on their subscriptions. That is more than probable, as experience has shown. “One perhaps would hardly expect that people would buy more roofing tiles because they saw them well advertised ; but they do. A fortnight ago we published a letter from the managing director of a great tileries company who informed us that in the twelve months during which the concern had advertised regularly in the ‘Daily Mail’ its output has nearly doubled. “As it has been with tiles and fish and motor-cars, so it can be with other things. Modern business cannot afford to hide its light under a bushel. Its overhead charges are too high for undue reticence and a limited turnover. It must work on the large scale under the stimulus of able, honest, and cleverly conceived publicity.”