The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 10. ADVERTISING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 52, 10 June 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 10. ADVERTISING.

When you take up an American magazine, you are surprised that any firm can put out such a bulky volume for a "quarter" or tess. You will find that twothirds of the bulk is made up of advertisements and that very often the advertisements are much more interesting and literary than the articles and stories. Most articles and stories are not new, Tliey are merely variations of ideas as old as the hills and as hoary as the pyramids. If we want to know how very up-to-date storytellers are we I should turn up Confucius, or Mose», I Horace, or any other antique. But tha ancients who used the same materials that we continue to use for the production of literature did not advertise. They had no striking literature calling attention to the value of anybody's pills, the perfect fit of Jones' togas, or anything of the -kind. Some eminent person has said that the truest part of a. newspaper is its 'advertisements. It sounds wise certainly, and it may mean that the Italian earthquakes did not happen, but that Brijjht's Blacking is the best in the world. This point remains. Bright's Blacking hasn't a hope of making, Mr. Bright's fortune unless the public is constantly reminded that it exists. Brown's pills are exactly the same kind of pills that your chemist can make up with lis little pestle, but Mr. Brown got ahead of him with his advertisement and after many years of insistence about the pills he dies the peaceful death of a philanthropist and leaves a few million pounds to his children. The public is satisfied with Mr. Brown's estimate of his own pills or they would refuse to buy them. So that advertising pays Mr. Brown and his millions of .patients. You can sell anything on earth at good prices if you .know how to advertise, and if you don't know, somebody else does, and can be bought for money. Genius stalks about the advertising world, just as it I does in the other paths of science and at j "genius is the art of taking pains," America, which' takes more pains to specialise than any other country, has tha monopoly of advertising genius. Tke American man who could use the moon j to advertise his porous plasters would make porous plasters popular, especially if "the .price was right." Many advertisers conclude that the smart "ad." that hits the reader in the eye is the royal road to fortune. This is not so. It is good and smart to tell the people that "now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by Sander's silk singlets," but the man who is going to buy a singlet is more concerned with the priee than anything else. The art of advertisement writing gives great scope for ideas and cleverness, but much cleverness is wasted if the reader peruses an advertisement that does not talk prices (and in preference to the love story on the bark page). . A writer of good advertisements in America can command a bigger income than the editor of the paper, and is more in demand than « successful jockey or even a colored prize-fighter. The absurd conclusions come to in many advertisements are obvious. The idea of an excited person demanding of the whole world what has happened to cough mixture amuses people and interests them. Everybody remembers, with great distinctness, some picture he has seen in a paper—a cartoon remains vividly in the memory, a little story lingers, a comic skit is not forgotten. The advertisement that is not forgotten means money in the bank to the advertiser. Men owe fortunes to the accidental discovery of a quaint word that fits the commodity they desire to sell. One of the most powerful of modern novels is based on the truth fhat advertising pays. Everybody' has read Wells' "Tono-Bungay." Eepetition of a phrase is frequently used most successfully for generations. Everybody knows what is. "worth a guinea a box," that "the blood is the life," the commodity that is "grateful, and comforting," and so on. One great English firm of soapmakers spends a quarter of a million pounds a year in advertising. For thirty years they have used the phrase "for the complexion," and the average reader anywhere without reference would immediately know the article referred to. That advertising pays is demonstrated every day by the increasing space demanded for advertisements in every good periodical that circulates. I Royal Academy artists do not now think iit beneath their dignity to use their | genius to illustrate advertisements. Who i forgets "Two years ago I used your soap, [ since which I have used no other"? No amount of argument and literary skill could be as valuable to an advertiser as the quaint or novel idea that immediately impressed the reader, and which he was unable to forget. Advertising nowadays is taught as a profession. Not only has America and Germany very large schools for the teaching of the art, but Britain shows tremendous advances in the matter. In New Zealand the advertiser is not always as up-to-date as the American. We have a Northern paper in front of us at the moment in which 1900 Christmas hams are advertised on 18th March, 1910. The advertiser was too tired to remember that Christmas was over or that the mere mention that lie had hams to sell was of no interest to anybody. He should have emphasised the point that not only were his hams the very acme of pig, but that the prices (he does not mention) were the most satisfactory part of the whole scheme. Advertising; was devised and was raised to a fine art because men want to wet rich. "Money may be the root of all evil, but a sprig of advertising, if it is a stronsr. henlthv one. grow* <rood roots. The world would be a sfl* place without advertising. We should miss the astonishing' declarations' on roadside fences, hoardings, and posters.

j, ¥ - " ■ The development of advertising is as important as the development of the butter industry or the milk output. Most of us have something to sell, and unless we advertise, buyers will not fall over each other in the race to buy unless they are told about the chances they are missing. The best way to tell them is by printer's ink.