THE POWER OF ADVERTISING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 161, 25 November 1912, Page 4

THE POWER OF ADVERTISING.

A writer in an American magazine sets forth with great directness.the advantages which accrue from judicious advertising. Advertising, he says, came in the first place because it was cheaper and better than any other method of selling goods. Even in the days of its youth it made fortunes for the pioneers who dared to use it. Clever merchants found that it was a short cut—that it would reach more people in a month than a salesman could reach in his lifetime. It did not, in the long run, add to the cost of the goods, for the reason that,it increased the output' and cut down the number of salesmen. Advertising makes two customers grow were one grew before. It brings the producer and the customer closer together. It eliminates a host of agents, canvassers, peddlars and middlemen. It awakens energy and ambition. It keeps the farms and villages in touch with the great cities, and levels the nation upward. It creates higher standards of living, and then holds them up before all the people. What advertising has done for commerce and prosperity is a story that would fill volumes. It lias created cities as well as trades. It has given us big sales with small profits, instead of small sales with big profits. It has helped the buyer and the seller alike. It has tensed the whole nation up to a finer sense of comfort and a higher conception of imccess. There will be more advertising in the future, not less, so the ad. men believe. The big corporation will learn than it should advertise for goodwill as well as for trade. It will use advertising to keep itself in touch with the public and to explain its vast industrial policies. Cities, too, and even States, will overcome the handicap of dumbness by the use of advertising. They will make known their -wants and their opportunities. The famous novelist, Ouida, expressed a general opinion years ago, when she said that "there is nothing that you may not get the people to believe, if you will only tell it to them loud enough and often enough." As a cynical jest, this was well enough; but as a slogan of advertising it may be fairly said to represent the stone age. The real opinion to-day about the gullibility of the people is that they are not gullible. They know their own needs and tastes, and are not fooled by your loud talking. In fact, the people arc in the long run the only arbiter of value aud the only final authority on all matters whatsoexer. Slowly but surely the opinion is gaining ground among advertisers that the public is like the soil. You can never ultimately fool. it. Sooner or later you will reap what you sow. If you plant thistles, you will not reap figs. If you plant thorns, you will not have grapes. You will get'back, in the long run, just exactly what you deserve.

should first be rinsed or washed thoroughly. Chew your food well. Get enough sleep. Sleep with windows open or, better still, outdoors. Sit and stand erect. Practice deep breathing. Breathe through your nose.