“ SUN SPEAKING ”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 5 (Supplement)

“ SUN SPEAKING ”

Five main telephone wires to the Auckland exchange should ensure prompt attention to people who wish to speak to any department in THE SUN building. There are 28 telephones in the building and nearly seven miles of wire were used to install them. A telephone bureau, in the constant charge of an operator, is housed at the top of the stairs on the third floor. A ring to 46-820 gets contact with the operator and the department required is then asked for. The five main lines are numbered from 46-820 to 46-824. Should the first number be engaged#when the subscriber asks Central for it, the call is automatically carried on to another, until the five wires have been tried. That is why it is necessary to put only one

influence on the most casual of readers through, suggestion. Until very recently the bulk of newspaper advertising belonged to or assumed the form of proclamation pure and simple. This, to a large extent, was due to the extremely conservative habits and regulations of many newspaper managers. At a time when the public was accustomed to look chiefly to its newspapers for general advertising, the insistence on small type and column rules, the imposition of an antiquated scale of charges and penalties succeeded ultimately in driving away to a wider and more liberal field the natural flood of advertising which could not allow itself to be held in perpetual shackles. To-day, display advertising, so long as it avoids the danger of blatancy and vulgarity, does its work much more effectively and more quickly than yards of huddled announcements packed away in comparative obscurity. THE SECRET OF GOOD DISPLAY What constitutes good display advertising? First of all, it has to be recognised that an advertisement is an appeal to newspaper readers to buy or sell something, or to do something. There is, or should be, a message in it. The message of an advertisement is conveyed by various symbols. These, by general consent, are divided into two classes —words, or the “copy”; and illustration type and ornament, the “display.” If the so-called copy alone sufficed to convey the message the majority of advertisements could be squeezed into short paragraphs. In the golden days of easy advertising, when newspapers could do what they liked practically on their own terms, which frequently were pitched on the highest scale, compression was fairly customary. But a more scientific system of display advertising now goes much farther than crowded announcement. The psychological Effects of size, proportion, and pleasing arrangement are so profound and yet so penetrating in purpose that advertisers will gladly pay for large areas to make a statement which would be equally readable in a few lines of type.