THERE ARE ADS THAT TELL THE TRUTH!
McMillin, Miles
The Cooperative Movement There Are Ads That Tell The Truth! By MILES McMILLIN IN SPITE of the fact that advertising is getting worse all the time there is still hope. More money is being spent...
...All because someone did the unheard of thing of telling the truth in an advertisement...
...More money is being spent today to tell bigger lies than ever before in history, but hard as the big advertising agencies are working to discredit the whole institution of advertising, there is still some common decency left...
...I have before me some of the dignified and simple advertising about the cosmetics sold by the co-ops...
...Truth Is Really Stranger . . . According to George Tichenor, the editor of the Cooperator, the appearance of the ad brought a congratulatory letter from one of the editors of the Reader's Digest, a telephone call from the New York Times, two requests from advertising agencies for rate cards, reproduction of the ad and comment in Advertising Age in two successive issues...
...And best of all—Eastern Co-op cigarette sales jumped 450 per cent in the month following the insertion of the ad...
...As for "vanishing" cream I am told without benefit of a picture of a debutante and a breathless announcement that "She's Engaged...
...Bear in mind some of the wild claims the regular commercial ads make for cigarettes, and then look at this language taken from the ad: "Tobacco is a relatively mild form of dope that gives pleasure to some and annoyance to others...
...If you can put the magazine down without getting a pretty strong idea that health, beauty, charm, and character aren't the exclusive products of the cosmetic laboratories, it's because you haven't learned to read...
...In the next issue of the Cooperator an ad appeared telling the people just that and that the product would be dropped until its quality had been improved...
...The ad goes on to explain that there are two blends of tobacco being used by the co-ops in their cigarettes...
...I am told that as far as Co-op Cold Cream is concerned it is as good as any for cleansing oily skins, but soap and water are better...
...The ingredients are listed for each product...
...There are advertisements being published today, believe it or not, which actually try to tell the truth about the products being promoted...
...It was even quoted by a columnist in the daily press, but, of course, the brand name was deleted...
...Not long ago, the co-op's testing kitchen proved that a competitive product was better than a co-op product...
...Take, for example, the cigarette ad which appeared in the Cooperator, the publication of the Eastern Cooperative League...
...that such a cream will form a thin coating over the skin, helping to reHam the natural oils and moisture...
...Cosmetic Advertising There is perhaps no place on earth where the truth is more of an unwelcome intruder than in the field of cosmetic advertising...
...Co-op Cigarettes will not improve your wind, give you the biceps of a bison, the throat of a songbird or the pearly teeth of a photographer's model...
...George Tichenor is a good cooperator...
...You won't find those ads in any of the slick-paper magazines with mass circulation, however...
...You'll be surprised to find that they never promise to perform miracles of any kind...
...Look through any of the magazines—at the many ads shreiking about how some daintily named deodorants are going to remove parts of your anatomy from the perspiratory functions of the body...
...It was reprinted in any number of labor papers and co-op papers...
...Nothing more hopeful than that...
...Someday, if you happen to see one of the papers being put out by the cooperatives, pick it up and look at the ads...
...He knows that co-op customers are co-op owners and that there's no profit in owners ^cheating themselves...
...That wasn't all...
...I have seen lipstick ads which have boldly and brazenly confronted the women of this country with the information that unless Skid-prufe was an eighth of inch thick on their lips the morale of our soldiers was doomed and the whole war effort sunk...
...If," says the footnote, "you don't like one you may like the other (Got you coming and going...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 41
