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Xo. 5 in a Series on
HOW TO GET THE MOST FOR YOUR RADIO DOLLAR
Lest We Forget
By Tod Williams
OUR nation is at war, and already the short-sighted are piping: "We must slash our advertising budgets."
Let me point out that such a thesis is a most certain road to disaster.
To prove my point, let me cite the example of a well-known scouring compound in the pre-World AVar I era. In the halcyon days before a crackpot Serb sent a bullet crashing into the person of an Hohenzollern at Sarajevo, the kitchen didn't exist without a chunky block of Sapolio on the drainboard.
The company used multi-colored ads in all the national magazines. They were lavish in their newspaper appropriation.
Came then that visitation from Mars, which, compared to the present ferocity of events, was as tepid as a Sabbath tea party; and Sapolio pulled in its neck.
I am assuming that the powers-that-were of the company glanced about and saw that they had a virtual monopoly on xhe cleansing powder field. So "clop" went the ax on the advertising budget. AVe can ascribe this sudden move to no other reason than that the world was at arms.
Then, the smokey wings of war vanished. So did Sapolio.
Purely in the spirit of research, I plodded from one retail store to another a week ago. At each, I inquired for this one-time famous product. Nary a trace of it could I find. As a matter of cold record, one or two young spriggens of clerks, with the first down still on their rosy cheeks, asked wide-eyed, "What is
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And so I say, if the nation's battle cry is to be: ''Remember Pearl Harbor/' let the war-period cry of the thinking advertiser be: ''Remember Sapolio/'
Professor Neil H. Borden in his monumental work. The Economic Effects of Advertising declares, "It is the tendency of advertisers to spend too much during time of prosperity and too little in depression."
I trust the eminent pedagogue will not shudder when I paraphrase that to, "advertisers tend to reduce expenditures during time of war, and all too often needlessly."
Let us all sit down and do some plain, hard-and-straight thinking before making the fatal mistake of slashing into an advertising campaign because of events over which we have no control.
Let us remember that when one enters on an advertising campaign, no matter how modest or how lavish, he is embarking on an endless job. True, curbs
MARCH, 1942 91