PUBLIC RELATIONS

THE MODERN ADVERTISER

1 Recognizes that goodwill towards a company and its products must be based on deeds but that deals which serve the public and the customers require

Advertisements are personalities in print. They reflect the individual companies and persons who create them. However, advertisements are not the only personalities that represent the advertiser. Each advertiser has many personal representatives: salesmen, credit men, past customers, and employees of office and factory. These people often speak a louder and a more effective language than any published advertisements. All public relations of the advertiser should be watched and coordinated with advertising programs. In turn, the advertising programs should be in line with the public relations policies of the advertiser. One of the first steps in the analysis of public relations is to look at the advertiser’s irritation points, those places or persons that are likely to irritate the people who come into contact with the advertiser.

IRRITATION POINTS

The first place to investigate for possible irritation points is among the executives of the company. If the executives are a surely domineering lot, no amount of advertising by the advertising department or agency will overcome the ill effects of such personalities.

Of course, the advertising manager cannot discharge the contentious executive, who may be the president. He can, however, try to minimize and remove the irritation points that destroy the positive effects of media advertising.

Public-relating programs can be made effective only when all company officials are aware of their responsibilities to the public. If untoward events have not forced the management to develop a public-relations program, the advertising manager may well bring about the inauguration of a suitable program. Employees, too, should be educated to sense their part in advertising the company. They should be given confidence in the management and in the products they help to make and sell. Their loyalty can no more be taken for granted than can the loyalty of the consumers. Every consumer is expected to buy the available product most to his advantage, and every employee is expected to seek employment in the best available place to his personal advantage. Public relations begin at home as a perennial operating principle and not as a publicity stunt.

The need for public-relations programs. Many members of the public are woefully ignorant of the services rendered by the corporations whose products they purchase and at times condemn. People tend to believe and perpetuate the “legends” they have learned about corporations. Bernard Lichtenberg aptly expressed this fact:

In this world, mark these words, it is singularly easy to have the wrong label pinned on you. Once it is pinned, you will have an almost impossible task to get it off. The sleepy grunt of old Mr. Vanderbilt one early morning in a railroad car remained a curse to his descendants until last year, when his great grandson with a different view on public relations was elected Governor of Rhode Island.

There is a more celebrated historic example. Do you kow why we mistakenly call ourselves Americans?

It is because a gentleman named American Vespucius contracted to supply Columbus with beef and biscuits. We ought to call ourselves Columbians. If there were any justice, we would be living in the United States of Columbia.

The beef and biscuit king did come out here, several years after Columbus had discovered the country. But he never had command of a ship in his life, and he never tried to steal the credit. It was given to him by a writer who didn’t have the facts. The man later published a retraction but the damage to Columbus was done.

It easy to get ideas into the public mind. But it is hard and costly to get them out. We public relations men, if we worked out just the single subject all the rest of our lives, couldn’t make public that George Washington was not the first president of the United States. (He was not. Our first president was a man named Samule Greene, who held the job only a few weeks before G.W.’s formal election). We could not persuade the Daughters of the American Revolution that George III was a pleasant, amiable old gentleman, whose cruelties to taxpayers here, were all the work of his ministers.

Such misconceptions are amusing enough to talk about. They cease to be funny when they are suddenly pinned to a business in whch we are interested.

Few businessmen realize in time that the public is not understanding their methods and motives as it should. This is borne in upon me every day. Many an executive sends for a public-relations counsel only after he discovers that some important public group is violently misinformed. We often do not get the opportunity to do preventive work. We are more like firemen sliding down brass poles, after the fire has broken out.

You remember what Emerson said about friends and enemies:

“He who has a thousand friends
Has not a friend to spare,
But he who has one enemy
Will meet him everywhere”

Dozens of surveys have revealed sound or unsound opinions regarding American business practices. The obvious lesson for management is to operate the business with so honest an appreciation of the customer and the public that the management can tell all the facts about the business and tell them plainly. Sound public relations begin at the top, not at the bottom of an organization. Public relations functions most effectively when it is treated as a top management function and considered at the policy making level.

No amount of advertising will make a company genuinely and generally liked. The advertising manager or someone in authority should consider the manners and morals and speech and actions of all members of the company. To do this, the man in charge of public relations should find out what outsiders think of the company. Questionnaires and interviews for this purpose may be just as important as for the study of consumer and product relations.

When a management appreciates the kinds of prejudices and misinformation that people have toward the company, a constructive public-relations program can be inaugurated. The first step, of course, for management is to put its own house in order. Industrial relations practices, for example, must be deserving of the respect of employees and the community. The best public relations is public service. Management must sense its citizenship to the extent of explaining its profits as well as its products. As a good citizens of the community, it will boost the community as well as itself. A railway company, for example, explained and praised the admirable qualities of the people and industries of the area served by the railroad.

Public interest advertising campaigns have been used by many advertisers: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, P.F. Goodrich Company, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, General Electric Company, Union Oil Company of California, and numerous others. However, the printed word alone is insufficient for the development of goodwill, pleasant contacts with employees and executives are also essential

PERSONAL CONTACTS WITH THE PUBLIC

No company can be perfect in its public relations, but it's management can examine every avenue of contact with the public. This includes the telephone calls, elevator operation, collection letters, office, factory, and sales personnel. Every employee is to some extent, a salesman and an advertising medium, Receptionists, floormen, guards, delivery truck drivers, cashiers, secretaries to officials and office boys often represent a company to more customers than the advertising department or the officers. The contact employees should be trained for their responsibilities to the public and be made acquainted with the advertising department’s problems and plans. This applies particularly to the retail sales personnel. Spending $10 in advertising to gain a new customer is a waste of money when an old customer might be held by means of 10 cents’ worth of systematic training for the salesclerks.

A good example of training the personnel is the warning pasted on the dashboard of a United Parcel Service truck: “Whisper the C.O.D. amount. They may have company”.

Many companies have hired advertising agencies that prepare friendly advertisements but fail to organize the advertiser’s offices to give equally friendly attention to the inquirers who answers the advertising. “Friendly advertising but cold service” is what the customer thinks when he reads a cheerful advertisement and then visits the icy offices of the advertisers. At the office of many a firm that advertises its helpfulness he finds that the “goddess at the information desk” greets him with an expression plainly showing that she is bored at the intrusion. Worst of all, the visitor may get past the information desk only to find that the executive knows nothing of the advertisement.

Many firms have remodeled their old reception rooms and eliminated that glass partition with the small circular hole between the receptionist and the waiting room. Now, a strained receptionist greets the caller in an informal manner. In progressive firms, when a caller telephones the company and asks for an appointment, the operator-information clerk asks, “Do you know to get here?” If the caller does not, she tells him the bus to take or explains the shortest automobile route.

Alert advertising managers have learned to use the reception room as a place where the visitor may sample the product or read the company’s advertising. Some of the best advertising space on all of the advertiser’s properties is the office or customers’ rooms. Consider, for example, the many banks that pay for billboard, car-card, and newspaper space while the best space to advertise the bank, namely, the tellers’ windows, is entirely free. Depositors have to stand in line before the tellers’ cages. They would be glad to read the bank’s advertising if only the bank would offer something more than signs of detective agency protection.

Courteous treatment of customers by the retail sales personnel often increases sales to a market extent. A hardware-store owner conducted an experiment to determine the part played by extra courtesy in increasing sales. One day, he instructed his employees to wait on the customers with only ordinary courtesy, not accompanying them to the door, nor making further suggestions, nor going out of their way to please customers. The following day, the clerks were instructed to show such extra courtesies as calling the customer by name, showing interest in the purchase, making a special effort to find the exact article to fit his needs and taking him to the door. The purchaes that day were reported to have been three times as great as on the first day.

Customers appreciate extra courtesies. The receptionist at one company’s information desk not only tries to arrange for the visitor to see the executive desired but also inspires respect for that company and shows her respect for the visitor himself by saying, “Fortunately, I have been able to arrange for you to see our Mr. O-and so. In this field, he’s one of the ablest men in the country. He is also one of our busiest men, but he will be pleased to see you”. This receptionist not only treats the customer courteously but also sells the company’s management to him and at the same time makes it possible for the executive to end the interview if the visitor takes up more time than necessary.

If properly approached, employees are glad to participate in a program designed to train them in customer relations. When the customer contact employees of one institution were shown motion pictures of themselves as they deal with customers, they decided that they should smile more often, look the customer in the the eye at least once during the transaction, and that the last ten seconds with the customer were most important for building goodwill. Furthermore, they discovered that they should never answer for the customer’s query by saying, “It’s a rule of the store”. The reason for the rule, rather than a parrot like statement, was more convincing to the customer.

CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

Complaints of customers should be looked upon as opportunities to cement relations between the customer and the company. The trained adjustment correspondent or complaint clerk should not think of himself as an official apologizer but as a member of the advertising department.

Some companies have a “complaint department”. Any centralized office for the handling of complaints should be called an “adjustment” or “customer-relations” department or some equally positive term. When all customers’ complaints are centralized, records can be kept and policies changed to prevent complaints. One the other hand, every employee should be taught to do his work so as to build goodwill and advertise the company’s products and services.

HOW TO COMBAT RUMORS AND PREJUDICES


Rumors and whispering campaigns are especially prevalent during wars and political campaigns, but they also occur in the business world where they may do much damage before they die out or are stopped. It is difficult to measure the effect of such rumors. The manager of a milk company stated that the consumption of milk temporarily decreased about 20 per cent in one city where certain politicians spread the rumor that the milk of a large company was contaminated.

Four methods have been used to combat rumors and prejudices:

1. The direct answer to the rumor, in newspaper or other advertising is often best. Sometimes the advertiser who wishes to throttle rumors by the direct answer also includes the offer of a reward for proof of the rumor. Many years ago, a cigarette manufacturer found that a whispering campaign had spread the rumor that his company had contributed funds to a foreign political group and had discharged all employees of a racial group. Several years previously the same manufacturer had been the victim of a whispering campaign to the effect that a leper was working in one of his factories. The manufacturer of course realized that any advertising that stated the rumor and denied it would make it known to many people who were ignorant of it. The rumor, however, was fought by frank advertising that offered rewards for evidence against the rumormongers.

2. Many companies are confronted with the problem of prejudice. Some ignore prejudicial rumor and advertise only the positive side of the story. Years ago, cigarette manufacturers did not try to increase the number of cigarette smokers by denying any ill effects of smoking on the health of smokers. They simply used advertising that included pictures of famous men and women who smoked cigarettes. Each reader was allowed to draw his own inference. The joys and prestige of smoking were emphasized without mention of any dangers.

3. The maligned person or firm can capitalize on the rumour for the benefit of customers or dealers. A rumor may start to the effect that a firm is owned by foreign interests. The company then has an opportunity to offer stock to the public as well as to publish the lists of stockholders.

4. Humor can be an effective weapon. The rumor or prejudice may be dealt with in exaggerated, humorous manner. Its absurdity may be thus illustrated and proved.

In addition to malicious rumors, many industries have to contend with prejudices that are perpetuated in all sincerity by person who are ignorant of the facts about a product. The manufacturers of canned goods must deal with the idea that canned foods are poisonous. Some people still believe that tomatoes allowed to stand in aluminum ware are poisonous. Prevalent false notions of this type are the following: Laundries use chemicals that ruin the clothes; coffee causes headaches; tea is a drink for “sissies”; playing pool causes crime; and cigarette-smoking by pregnant women produces unhealthy children. Almost every industry suffers from false notions of long standing, which educational advertising may help to remove from people’s minds. Advertisers must contend with these as well as with untrue but short-lived rumors.


IN PUBLIC RELATIONS, ATTITUDES RATHER THAN IDEAS ONLY MUST BE CHANGED

Many companies have done institutional advertising that gave information about the company and its goods deeds, on the assumption that sympathetic understanding would result. Information, however, is not enough to produce good will.

The American Telephone &Telegraph Co and its subsidiaries have conducted experiments to measure the effects of various kinds of institutional advertisements. Opinion surveys are made twice yearly so that the companies will know how they stand with the public. One method of investigation is by comparing the attitudes of a group of people who have first been asked to read an advertisement with the attitudes of a control group who have not read the advertisement. Each group consists of 500 persons. Here is the copy of one of the advertisements tested. Under the heading, “Security and a Fair Return”, it read:

When and wherever you invest your money, you naturally expect two things:
1. lasting security
2. a fair and steady return. 1. lasting security
2. a fair and steady return It is management’s responsibility to see to it that the invested dollars of these people are secure and that, unfailingly, they earn a fair return. These dollars are vital. They are the dollars we use to build and expand the telephone system.

This advertisement was one in a series run prior to a request for an increase in telephone rates, the first request which the company had made in twenty five years. The field survey showed little or no difference in the attitude indexes of the two groups who were questioned. Almost two-thirds of the people seemed to think that the advertisement was addressed to investors rather than to customers. About a fifth thought that the purpose was to show the convenience of having a telephone. Only a very small percentage connected the advertisement with a company’s need for higher rates.

A second advertisement that had the same purpose as the first was tried in another territory. Under the headline “You’re all invited for Thanksgiving” it read: “It’s a date! Kids excited at a country trip. Father delighted to visit the old folks…so’s mother….and relieved, too, to escape cooking chores. Amazing, how one simple call can add up to give so much pleasure. But not amazing at all is how costs add up to give you the service.
Day to day costs of keeping the service running right are mostly wages and materials. The money we take in should meet these costs-and also include a profit because the investors who supply funds for improving and expanding the service want a fair return for their money. That’s the key to the strength and stability we need to provide good service now and in the future.

This advertisement proved to be statistically effective in getting across some of the intended purposes. Certainly, numerous studies have shown that institutional advertisements, which merely present factual information about a company, do not always change attitudes. The information must be emotionalized and tied into the interests of readers.

GETTING PUBLICITY FROM THE PRESS

All editors suspect the presence of “free-space material“ when they look over the release that comes to their desks. They often discard material with real news value because the material has not been offered properly. To overcome the fears and prejudices of editors, some advertisers or their agencies have a publicity department issue news releases under the names of fictitious organizations, names designed to convey an atmosphere of noncommercial disinterestedness.

Of course, editors may scorn what they call the “fraud” of the false front bureau or institute, but they feel just as resentful about the use of the advertising agency’s own name on the letterhead that offers publicity material. The reason for their prejudice against many advertising agencies is the fact that some have used their space-buying power as a “blackjack” to force the publication of publicity material. Hence, editors suspect that the agency’s name is supposed to be an implied suggestion of pressure.

The best approach seems to be that of straightforward honesty and accuracy in the 'release' material that is really worthy of publication as news to general readers. Some agencies, such as N.W. Ayer & Son, Inc., have achieved a reputation, for giving accurate and worthwhile news, but years of effort and many personal contacts were necessary to accomplish the reputation. Eventually, the name of the agency or advertiser at the head of release pages may earn a measure of respect and confidence from auditors.

News releases should be sent only to those editors whose readers might be interested in the news. The standard Rate $ Data Service will indicate the publications that may be addressed. Indiscriminate mailings are a waste of money.

Furthermore, releases should not be addressed “to the editor” if it is possible to address them to a specific person. Lists of the names of staff members of newspapers and journals should be kept up to date. This also enables the editor to use first-class mail more effectively for important releases. The use of first-class mailings of typed letters also tends to force the advertiser to present his material in brief form, and the shorter the material the more likely it is to gain publicity. However, neither brevity nor length will gain the advertiser publicity for obvious statements that merely “plug” his product. A publicity man for an advertiser needs a better nose for news than a reporter, because the news release is more apt to be viewed with suspicion of the writer’s motive.

Some rules of news writing to keep in mind when writing publicity for a company are the following:

Always ……but always…. Put the firm name and the publicity man’s name at the top of the first page, with full address and telephone number. May be there is something more the editor wants to know. If so, he’ll have an easy job hunting you up.

A survey of 500 editors concerning publicity releases indicated that about 20 per cent want more releases but they stressed the need for more intelligently written releases. The editor’s strongest suggestions were:

1 have experienced writers
2 give specific facts
3 have specific mailing lists
4 eliminate sales promotion
5 supply sharp photos
6 date all releases
7 back up your claims

Editors, of course, do not like to have sales promotion included in news items. That should be paid for at regular advertising rates. It is often permissible, however, to state where the product may be obtained: from the manufacturer, distributors, or retailers.

Readers of news do want statistics about weight, construction, and costs, but they prefer honest rather than highly retouched photographs. Advantages over previous products may be included. Technical facts that back up the claimed advantages often have news value. Readers want to know what a product will do for them – not how proud the manufacturer is of it.

PUBLIC RELATIONS FOR ADVERTISING MEN

Members of the advertising fraternity have a public relations problem for themselves as well as for their employers. Many people do not look upon advertising in an objective or favorable ways that have been presented in this book.

As expressed by James E. McCarthy, Dean of Notro Dame’s College of Commerce, advertising cannot better its position by pretending that criticism of advertising does not exist. Although the virtues of advertising, “far outweigh the faults”, the criticism cannot be ignored. The bulk of advertising is “effective and praiseworthy,” he stated, but the responsible majority of advertising men cannot ignore the criticisms leveled at the minority. As he stated: "The real challenge does not come from the public, the advertiser or the merchant. The challenge comes from within".

Because of the nature of its function in an economy such as ours, advertising should be determining public trends, cultivating the public taste and even raising the intellectual tone of society. But it has not been doing so.

Elaborating on the three major accusations against advertising – sameness, lack of dignity and untruthfulness – Dean McCAarthy said:

Sameness: Here the worst offender is television, with radio a close runner-up in the infuriating monotony of the oft repeated commercial. What most of us cannot understand is why a presumably intelligent sponsor persists in antagonizing the public upon whose goodwill the sale of his product depends.

Lack of Dignity: The occasional impropriety in advertising has multiplied and worsened into shocking bad taste in both art and copy. The decline of standards of good taste has been gradual, but it has been so steady that it seems deliberate. You cannot afford it. A reaction already has set in, for this is one of advertising’s shortcomings that the public is already doing something about.

Untruthfulness: Advertising as a matter of long practice has depended almost entirely upon overstatement as the way to express ideas. In our personal lives, we soon learn to discount the man who is constantly in an uproar, who cannot distinguish between the insignificant and the important .

There is some reason to believe that the public is beginning to think that for too long advertsing has been in an uproar over matters that are of little consequence, and that many of its campaigns are keyed at too high a pitch. The result is resistance instead of acceptance.

The need for truth in advertising is constantly stressed by editors of our advertising journals. One leader, for example, condemns the oft-made excuse for exaggeration, “that it is just advertising”. It seems to me that the danger lies in that last conclusion. So long as the people who do exaggerated and misleading advertising are willing to condone it on that ground, just as long will the public be encouraged to think of advertising as a kind of irresponsible, ballyhoo business where the truth is held in pretty low esteem. I cannot understand why a copywriter wants to write copy, which he doesn’t think people will believe. The purpose of advertising is to persuade and convince. At least I always thought that was the purpose.

We have come a long way from the days when the patent medicine advertiser could promise a product that would cure everything from corns to dandruff, including cancer and tuberculosis, and at the same time find any considerable number of people who would believe his claims. Today the advertiser faces a public that is a lot shrewder and a lot more intelligent than I think he frequently gives them credit for being so. Of course, there are a lot of naïve, easily swayed people. But by and large, the opinion makers, who can kill a product by their disapproval, are becoming more hard-boiled in their appraisal of what advertisers say.

They are quicker to laugh at exaggerated statements on the printed page, quicker to turn the dial when their ears are offended by raucous and blatant commercials than were those people of the preceding generation. In fact, many of them are too skeptical. They are inclined to look with disbelief on some advertising statements that are conservative recitals of proven facts. There lies another danger. A public that becomes disillusioned by too many liars is apt to punish not only the liars but their contemporaries who are telling the truth.

Leaders in advertising are concerned over the play on psychological insecurities, as seen in the cosmetic field, that is aimed at the typical adolescent’s worries about his social status, and in campaigns aimed at arousing fears in parents about children’s diseases. Too many advertisers of dentifrices and antispectics are still hiring a model dressed in a white coat like that of a physician, who talks about what doctors recommend and gives advice of a professional nature – advice that is always favorable to the product advertised.

Many educators resent the misleading tactics of certain advertisers and therefore warn students against all, rather than only the bad advertising. Fortunately for advertising, leaders in advertising recognize the problem and are seeking improvement through legislation, when necessary, but mainly through self-regulation.

CONSUMER PRODUCT RATING SERVICING

The two best known services of this kind are Consumers Union and Consumers Research. Their origin stemmed from the depression of the 1930s when it was assumed that people had so little money that each penny was counted and that consumers would welcome advice from a service that rated the products on the market. F.J. Schlink and Arthur Kallet wrote the book 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs, and Stuart Chase and F.J Schlink wrote 'Your Money’s Worth'. The latter was called the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the consumer movement. These were, in part, a crusade that told consumers not to believe all the advertising they read. In 1936, consumers Union split off from Consumer Research and set up its organisation. CU, as it is usually called, now has approximately 750,000 subscribers and CR, perhaps 100,000

Briefly stated CU operates in the following manner:

It decides what goods to test on the basis of its reader’s demands or it may take a look at a product that has recently undergone big technical advances. It may examine a product because advertising claims are “particularly exuberant”. It also decides what brands to test on the basis of their popularity and availability. Shoppers for CU, about 170 part time workers in 75 to 80 cities buy the products to be tested, a retail store. They forward the product to the laboratory.

Generally, the readers of the consumer product rating reports are largely from the higher income, better-educated groups. Among the readers, some take the reports very seriously and buy those items that are given “best buy” ratings; most subscribers probably think of the ratings as simply another kind of information about a product and then make up their own minds on the basis of a whole complex of influences.

MANY MEDIA POLICE ADVERTISING SUBMITTED TO CURB OBJECTIONABLE COPY

The extent to which space and time media curb advertising abuses varies with the individual publisher or station. Certain owners have sought to uphold high standards in the belief that advertisers recognize the benefits of protection against unfair competitive statements, superlative comparisons unwarranted claims, and “bait” advertising. Some media owners spend and lose many dollars each year because they reject advertising, which they consider objectionable. They believe that their policy of self regulation results in benefits to them because it raises their stature with ethical advertisers and with the members of their audiences.

One of the oldest and most effective advertising watchdogs is the New York Times. Advertising Acceptability Department, offspring of a policy laid down in 1896 by Adolph S. Ochs, when he took control of the newspaper. He believed that a newspaper should seek to have intelligent people take it into their homes and find no advertising that is misleading, untrustworthy, or offensive to persons of good taste.

Currrently, the department revises, rewards, or rejects about 1,700 advertisements each year. Rejections run about 10 percent of this number. Three fourths of all copy revisions are made in retail advertisements. Every effort is made to work out art or copy changes with the advertiser or his agency. Examples of revisions made are shown in Table 35-1

Many of our leading magazine publishers maintain defined ethical standards for the advertising that is submitted for their columns. Good housekeeping, for example, has developed its consumers’ guaranty for more than a half century. The magazine’s guaranty is a product endorsement indicating assumption of a definite liability by the publisher. “If any product or any service is not as advertised herein, it will, upon request and verification of complaint, be replaced or the money paid, therefore refunded.

The Curtis Publishing Manufacturing company’s copy service has operated more than sixty years. The Copy Service Division personnel read every advertisement submitted and use persuasion to effect any needed changes. Curtis copy service protects readers and advertisers from the degrading, ruinous effects of advertising at its worst, strives constantly for the intent and techniques of advertising at its best.


Table 35-1
Copy as submittedChanged to
“The most talked of motion picture in years”

“The savings –greater than ever”
“Thousands in New York City have saved with our famous carpet packages”
“Never before such a fabulous way to keep you delectable all over”
“The lowest price ever offered”
“The best buy in town”
“Superior to any you’ve seen at this price”

The finest coat we have ever seen”
“It was a charm to insure good hunting, good fighting, good loving” (a perfume)
“Naughty – but so nice to your figure” (underwear)		“One of the most talked-of motion pictures in years”
“The savings – more appealing than ever”
“Carpet package specials”

“Designed to keep you delectable all over –even in the simmering summer heat”
“The lowest price we ever offered”
“one of the best buys in town”
“Superior to what you’d expect to see at this price”
“The finest coat we have ever sold”
“It was a charm to insure good hunting, good fighting, good living”
“Paris-inspired - but so nice to your figure”

Some of the radio and television networks have developed extensive codes for advertising. Unfortunately, some stations have not signed the code, and therefore practices vary with the ethical standards of the individual managements. Of course, the Federal Communications Commission keeps an alert ear for broadcasting malpractices of all kinds. The Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Post Office Department maintain strict standards in many advertising fields. The national and local Better Business Bureaus conduct analysis and investigations of advertising and selling practices in the major media.

Much improvement in advertising practice has taken place during the last few decades but more is still to be done. The big problems lie in the “gray” area of advertising where advertisements, though not legally provable as deceptive, nevertheless stretch the rules of truth, public credibility, and good taste. Too many advertisements that are insincere and explicit gullibility still appear in publications and on screen. Advertising men have a large public relations problem before them. They are bound to take an active interest in consumer attitudes toward advertising, to view their work honestly and objectively, to improve their practices wherever possible, and to convince consumers that advertising, rightly used, benefits consumers as well as publishers, advertising agencies, and other members of the advertising fraternity.

The Advertising Council, Inc., 24 West 45the St., New York, is a business association intent on selling beneficent ideas and ideals to the American public. Essentially, it is a pool of talent that includes voluntary contributions and creative abilities of constituents and affiliates: advertising agencies, national advertisers, and all advertising media. The primary purpose is “to provide the means of marshaling the forces of advertising” for the common good. It was started as the War Advertising Council early in 1942. The Ad Council has fathered over 300 public-service campaigns, from Fat Salvage to Fight Tuberculosis. During World War II, it helped stimulate the planting of 50 million victory gardens; salvages 538 million pounds of waste fat, 23 million tons of paper, and 800 million pounds of tin; sell $800 million worth of war bonds; and recruited manpower for industry, nurses for hospitals, men and women for the Armed Forces. It has averaged $100 million worth of advertising per year, an output somewhat larger than the combined budgets of Procter & Gamble, General Motors, and General Foods.

Two of its recent campaigns have been against juvenile delinquency and slums. The antislum campaign, requested by the American Council to Improve Our Neighbourhoods (ACTION), aims both to rebuild present slum areas and to “fight the deterioration of homes and neighbourhoods which breeds the slums of tomorrow”.

Among the Council’s current campaigns are Better Schools, Future of America, Civil Defense, Community Chest, Crusade for Freedom, Engineers Wanted, (Home) Fire Prevention, Forest Fire Prevention, Group Observer Corps, Red Cross, Religion in American Life, Stoc Accidents, and United States Saving bonds. For some campaigns, the Council provides “ammunition” which salesmen of business firms may want to leave with prospects on their regular calls. The Future of America – a 24 Page booklet on what the Council calls the “long-range opportunities….for every business and individuals”. The Miracle of America – a campaign booklet providing up-to-date facts on the economic system (Cost of either The Future or the Miracle is $5 per 100, plus handling and shipping charges). Then – for free – are one call, a leaflet on the Ground Observer Corps, and After High School What? A pamphlet to persuade students to go in to engineering or related fields. As for Better Schools, the Council offers a 44 page working guide for local use on “How Can We Advertise School Needs?” and “How Can We Get Enough Good Teachers?” a 92 page working guide for citizens’ school committees. (Price on quantities of these guides and orders and inquiries for other material can be obtained form the Council.)