Many of us will remember being highly entertained in Shanghai by a play produced by a travelling professional company entitled "It Pays To Advertise." Local advertisers must have blessed that company for it emphasized so greatly the tremendous power of the Press, and its use in the business world when it force it directed towards commerce.
The full power of advertising though is perhaps not entirely appreciated even in these up-to-date days, It is twelve years since Ethel Mannin published her book "Sounding Brass" which has to deal with the subject, and though written of a time in business long before the War (the Great War, not the China One) some of the firm beliefs of that period are held to-day.
It is not uncommon now to find people replying to advertisement salesmen that they are not advertise ing since business is slack, and or this point our writer has something to say.
Speaking of her hero's attitude of mind—he was in the advertising line+she said: "It seemed to him that there was mot a business house in the country which made enough use of the application of the power of the Press They were afraid to spend money. They could not see that fitful, inadequate advertising was money wasted, because it did not arrest attention; whereas a big-splash advertising repaid the original outlay over and over again. His own firm did not advertise properly. It appalled him to think that some of the firm's directors had been with the firm for twenty years and had not realised: i."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.