MESSENGER TO THE KING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4506, 18 September 1930, Page 4

MESSENGER TO THE KING.

POWER OF MODERN ADVERTISING.

Advertising', essentially, is the awakening of human desire (runs an editorial in the famous American weekly, Collier’s). There is no stronger force in this new world of ours.

The successful advertisement makes you crave new things. The motive is frankly commercial, bur the consequences reach far beyond trade.

Though the purpose of an advertiser is primarily to sell his goods, the by-products of his efforts have had prodigious effects upon our opinions, our standards of taste, our habits, and even upon our picture of a good life.

Contrast our familiar life of today with that of any other time and people and you get a vivid impression of what advertising has done for us. We arise in the morning and we bathe. Why? ‘Merely because soaptnalkers have taught us the importance of cleanliness. Frequent washing is a new habit. Not even nobles and kings of the Middle Ages were addicted to the bath. Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers could go days without the benefits of water. We learned the habit from the soap men. Beards and even moustaches have gone out of fashion because razor manufacturers persuaded ns to shave. Forty years ago the man who shaved daily was a dud. To-day a beard is a relie. Thank advertiseing for that it you are against whiskers. We clean our teeth because toothpaste manufacturers have made us believe in the importance of oral hygiene. They have saved us from more aches than the dentists could cure.

Our breakfast habits are the results of the teaching of food manufacturers. The old heavy breakfast has gone the way of the hoop-skirt. Our health is better. Advertising did it. The clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the furniture we use, our very conception of a home is I lie product of advertising. Motor manufacturers taught us by the printed word and the, illustrative picture to desire swift n nimportation; Millions of us began to want automobiles. The motor car revolutionised our way of (living. Look at our life from any standpoint and you will find our civilisation is built upon the use of tilings for which advertisers stimulate a desire in us. We appreciate good music because of the teaching of phonograph and radio makers.

Although in its earliest forms advertising was a two-word notice of seven letters —“For Sale” — modern advertising deals in ideas quite as much as in ' commodities.

We are interested in new utilities and services before we are in (lie frame of mind to buy new commodities. We want fast transportation before we begin to shop for motor cars.

Advertising with its subtle stimulation of our wants and aspirations makes us respond to multifarious appeals.

The advertiser contrives the picture and tells the story, and we behave as he foresees we will. He succeeds, however, only when he tells the truth. Sincerity is essential.

No advertisement can be eloquent enough to induce people repeatedly to buy a shoddy .article, or to believe a lying story. Man is still a thinking and deciding animal.

So powerful and persuasive is this new force that the records show that those manufacturers who have appealed directly to the pulbJit* throiigb.'ad|VoiUising| have far outstripped their reticent competitors of other years.. Statisticians are able to draw clear and startling lines revealing’ that those manufacturers who have consistently carried their stories to consumers have become the leaders of industry. Those who stopped advertising stopped producing-.

The record is amazing.j After all, public demand is intangible. You can’t even measure the effect upon yourself of reading week after week and month after month the messages sent out by manufacturers; that is to say, you can’t measure the effect unless you take an inventory of your possessions and of your desires.

Bankers could tell us, however, that we and so many thousands and millions like ns were moved cumulatively by such an appeal. The advertisers' imponderable appetil can be weighed and is weighed in the counting-house. We benefit, in a thousand ways. We are trained to demand good products. Given a choice, all of us instinctively demand an ad-

vertised product. We trust- the known name.

Often tin' advertised product is cheaper. National demand makes possible mass production,

and that mils costs. More directly, by creating a. demand cuts marketing costs and so serves the consumer.

If journalism is the little sister of literature, advertising began certainly as the Cinderella of selling. Now it is the great, motive force in our commercial life. It is tlie life-blood of public demand. Our material civilisation lias been made possible by it.

The old kings and aristocrats have departed. In the new order ihe masses are master. Not a few, Ini! millions and hundreds of millions of people must he persuaded, (n peace and in war, for all kinds of purposes, advertising carries the message to this new king—the people. Advertising is the king’s messenger in the day of economic democracy. All unknowing a new force has been let loose in the worlds. Th ose who understand it will have one of the keys to the future.