ZEALOUS PERSUADERS
THE-SHOCKING HISTORY OF ADVERTISING, by E. S. Turner; Michael Joseph. English price, 15/-. No advertising man today would push coffee as a remedy for consumption, dropsy, gout, scurvy, the King’s Evil and hypochondriac winds. Nor would he caution purchasers of a hair restorative to keep it off the backs of their hands lest they grow hairy paws. Oh, no! Since these and similar exhortations appeared (in the 17th Century) advertising has kept in step with civilisation’s advance. Nowadays, the advertiser's zeal :for gracious living can always be supported by scientific proof. Items like the combined tooth-brush and tongue-scraper (with the patented vacuum-action groove which sucks out -harmful bacteria), and the hand-lotion that washes
away A-Bomb contamination, have the support of the bes# scientific brains. With these and many more such idiocies to hand, E. S. Turner might well have turned his book into a shocking lambasting of advertising, That: he has not done so is a tribute as much to his self-control as to his scholarship. His gift for the: parenthetical witticism (A poster of two enigmatic nymphs, hot from the Decameron, poised above their Barlock typewriters, may have done -much to fill moralists with misgivings about the wisdom of employing women in offices") has also been kept in check just sufficiently to leave room for constructive and considered judgment. The result is a tightly-knit history which instructs while it entertains, and which should be acceptable to advertiser and
consumer aiike.
A.S.
F.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 12
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245ZEALOUS PERSUADERS New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 12
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