THE POWER of PUBLICITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE POWER of PUBLICITY

tjIGHT down through '' ages men have ■** always found it necessary and profitable t 0 place their wants before the public and announce the merits of their wares and ways in commerce. This necessity has been met by the exercise of one or the other of two familiar methods —either by proclamation, or by persuasion. Before the advent of printing there was only one way to secu re the interest of the people: the “bellman” or the “town clerk” bellowed the needs and announcnents of our commercial ancestors. Even to this day all the world over the clanging of a bell occasionally serves as (to borrow a fine old word to describe its service), a “remembrancer”; it is used almost exclusively by churches, ships, and auction marts. It is often forgotten (and not infrequently forgotten by great newspapers) that the power of publicity, which is the Press, is drawn largely from the revenues derived from advertising. A British authority on the subject has estimated on a conservative basis that tbe whole available fund for advertising of all kinds throughout the world is about £i>oo,ooo,ooo a year, and that something less than one-half of the total goes to the newspapers. Without such income it would be impossible for newspapers, either individually or collectively, to maintain expensive literary staffs, costly machinery, and the worl^—’dp organisations which now exist for the collection and distribution of news. And yet some newspapers, more particularly wealthy- ones in possession of a monopoly, seem to look upon advertising merely as a necessary evil and a vulgar intrusion, and do not encourage their news readers to read the advertisements by which these journals live and wallow in prosperity. ADVERTISERS DRIVEN AWAY * Many advertisers in different countries, because of the illogical obduracy of the more conservative newspapers in keeping advertisements almost wholly apart from news (as in Auckland before the advent of THE SUN), have been driven to the adoption of other media for publicity. Hence the defacement of many public places, railway stations, and the fair countryside with blatant advertisements. This must continue so long as rich newspapers refuse to display commercial announcements on the pages containing general ne vs. Of course, an acquired habit may fool many even shrewd business men for a long time, but the commercial world is awaking briskly to the fact that file expensive newspaper commodity known as publicity shou.J be given the best possible treatment by its sellers. DECORATIVE AND INFORMATIVE THE SUN’S policy in respect of advertising and its right place and use in newspaper publicity is simple, direct, and open. Moreover, this policy is not an e-:"odient to

secure business in a community that has been compelled to accept a different system. It has been appreciably approved in practice.

THE SUN believes that advertisements, quite apart from being an essential source of revenue, can and do help, if artistically designed and adequately prepared, to decorate a newspaper and enhance its publicity value. It canr.ot be denied that advertisements are informative in purpose, and contain news of equal value to their readers as that of some of the other columns in the paper.

Believing that, THE SUN, as ail exercise of duty and fairness to advertisers, places

advertisements, whenever practicable, as near as possible to the class of general news in closest relation to or association with the subject matter of the commercial announcement. This system encourages news readers to read advertisements, instead of discouraging them and leaving them to give only a fraction of their attention to trade publicity. ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING To-day, advertising is recognised as an indispensable adjunct to many classes of trade, industry, and business. Certain firms, even in conservative England, find it profitable to spend £IOO,OOO a year or more in Press advertising. Such expenditure creates and maintains the sale of their products. In several familiar cases several firms have made noble fortunes as a result of wise Press advertising, while others, neglecting publicity and living

on tradition have been pushed back into the realm of forgotten things. Those win who effectively announce. The vast amount of money spent on advertising has raised the inevitable questions as t 6 the economic soundness of publicity. It has been argued, for example, that such expenditure increases the cost of the commodities advertised and sold, and that the consumer, in the end, must pay the bill. This argument will not stand examination. It is fallacious, because it ignores the problem of distribution. Production is but one side of the manufacturer’s or merchant’s business, and goes for nothing unless a link is established with the public. That link is supplied by advertising, indeed, as a leading British expert has noted, without it goods -would rot in the warehouse or on the shelves of the shop. “So far from advertising raising the cost of commodities, it actually cheapens them by creating demand on a large scale, which in turn stimulates production; and, as a general rule (though it is not yet fully appreciated in New Zealand) the greater the production, the more cheaply a commodity can be [produced. The plain truth is that a heavy expenditure in advertising is not a disease of an old and effete world, a gross waste of good money, but a new method of progress, still far from its full stature of development. As the world expands and industry becomes more complicated, production advances by leaps and long strides and leaves exchange behind it.

It has now become more difficult and expensive to sell things than to make them. So we find capital turning more and more to develop its selling and marketing agencies, and looking everywhere for the most efficient methods of bringing together manufactured commodities and those who desire them. There is a further paradox in the fact that the cheapest way of selling one’s goods is to spend large sums in doing. It is beyond challenge that in order to save money in advertising it is necessary to make large appropriations for buying space, to engage the best display artists and writers,* to advertise in the brightest papers, and to insist on getting advertisements displayed as informative announcements, as commercial news of value to news readers. THE PENALTY FOR NEGLECT The first requisite for successful advertising is to see that the preparation of advertisements has been adequate. In all advertisements it is absolutely essential that the appeal should catch the eye readily, that the right headline in exactly the right type is employed, and that its presentation has been entrusted to an expert in newspaper publicity display. The advertisement that tells its story simply on its face brings better results than tedious repetition and rhetoric. No one can hope to excel in the preparation of advertisements without technical knowledge of the various branches of printing, and a complete understanding of the exact values of display type. The penalty for neglect of these essentials is •to divert public attention to the more attractive advertisements of alert trade competitors.