ADVERTISING MEDIUMS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 216, 12 August 1937, Page 14

ADVERTISING MEDIUMS.

POPULARITY OF NEWSPAPERS. THE NEED FOR EFFICIENCY, CHRISTCHURCH, Aug. 10. Officially compiled statistics of expenditure on advertising were available in only two countries in the world, America and Norway, said Mr A. B. Edwardes, director of the Charles Haines Advertising Agency, Christchurch, in an address on ‘•Stretching the Advertising Pound," to members of the Canterbury Advertising Club. In 1935 the expenditure on advertising in the United States totalled £81,000,000, said Mr Edwardes. Newspapers, whicli accounted for 37.51 per cent, of the expenditure, provided easily the most popular form of advertising, magazines and other periodicals being next on tho list with 26.6 per cent.; radio stations carried 15.16 per cent., and among the others, outdoor forms of advertising, 5.5 per cent. In Norway, newspapers were first, with 55 per cent, out of a total expenditure of £2,000,000, the next most popular medium carrying 16 per cent. Radio stations were at the bottom of the list with only 4 per cent. Emphasising that advertising called for great efficiency and should be planned well ahead, Mr Edwards said that, through misdirected efforts, a lot of advertising was not bringing in anything like the returns it should. Advertising, too, was only part of the story—the selling machine as a whole should function properly. Another point made by Mr Edwardes was that some firms expected too much from advertising, which very often had to arrest a decline before it could make any improvement. Speaking generally, lie said lie was convinced from his own experience that it was most important that advertising should be informative, describing a product clearly and straightforwardly, with simplicity as its keynote. Emphatic declarations of superiority were not sufficient. Summing up, Mr Edwardes said: “Any successful advertiser will tell you that tho best advertising medium is the newspaper.” *