ADVERTISING RESULTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 June 1938, Page 5

ADVERTISING RESULTS

SOME AMERICAN FIGURES. The proved value of sustained advertising was effectively demonstrated by facts and figures presented by Mr P. B. Levy as a preliminary to his address to the Canterbury Advertising Club on “The Planned Publicity Campaign.” People, said Mr Levy, did not appreciate the power of modern advertising and the tremendous influence which it exerted on the community. Brilliant ideas originated in large masses of people and for that reason Mr Levy took the United States of America as an example to illustrate his point. New Zealanders, he said, were- a race of “idea pinchers,” and took all that was best from America, England and Australia. In 1911, said Mr Levy, the American Tobacco Company was split up because of anti-trust legislation passed by congress. As a result there had been several offshoots from the major company, which, in the past, had enjoyed a monopoly. Prior to the split the company had sold ten thousand million cigarettes annually and this enormous figure would probably convey as much to his hearers as it did to him. The branch companies entered into competition and advertising campaign, and in 1923 seventy thousand million cigarettes had been sold for the year. An amount of £25,000 .was a large sum for a Dominion agency to handle at once, he continued, but in one year an American cigarette manufacturer spent 20,000,000 dollars —£4,000,000—on advertising. As a result of the campaign he showed a net profit of 49,000,000 dollars next year. Three American companies which supplied 90 per cent of the cigarettes to Americans spent almost 270,000,000 dollars on advertising in 12 years. They got large returns for their money, and men who spent such sums expected results.

In 1932 one of the firms curtsied its advertisement by 4,000,000 dollars and the next year its sales dropped 50,000,000 dollars. The Americans had, by good advertising, induced American women to smoke cigarettes, and this phase of American advertising was a romance in itself, concluded Mr Levy.