ADVERTISING HASN'T GONE TO WAR
Sheridan, Mary
Your Money's Worth Advertising Hasn't Gone To War By MARY SHERIDAN ONE of the paradoxes of wartime is the increased amount of money spent for advertising as buyable goods and services decrease....
...5,172,378 5,653,176 An advertising agency in Cambridge, Mass., which has issued a pamphlet called "Strategic Advertising," bluntly says that a company loaded with profits can buy expanded advertising at a 851/2 per cent discount...
...5,617,205 5,103,115 Coca-Cola...
...The FTC couldn't interfere with Mexican broadcasts, but it could and did bring civil proceedings against Cooley in Los Angeles for his failure to "cease and desist...
...Webster University...
...Bowles said the 1943 profits of department and specialty stores were 1,4)46 per cent above the prewar base: men's apparel stores, 289 per cent...
...The FTC has ordered discontinuance of the word "university...
...From 1936 to 1939 their profits averaged $22,382,000 a year before paying taxes, $17,472,000 after taxes...
...Back in 1981 Albert F. Cooley created the profitable character of "Daddy Rango" over a southern California radio station...
...Business Week reports that Daddy Rango's Sunshine Kelp Tablets and H. &. H. Health Tablets "often were bought in $50 and $100 quantities...
...As Colston Warne comments in his article, "The Scandal of Wartime Advertising...
...An organization in Atlanta, Ga., with that title, which sells correspondence courses, is not, says the FTC, a university but a business conducted by a lawyer from his law office, with a "faculty" of the lawyer and members of his family...
...Nor has OPA price control made retailers candidates for the poorhouse...
...13,880,784 11,730,650 General Motors ..................12,013,778 10,130,409 Lever Bros...
...Advertising Age recently published the 1944 and 1943 sums spent by the 13 largest advertisers in magazines, network radio, and national farm publications...
...9,423,941 8,669,431 General Mills...
...Department Of This And That...
...The best vegetable seed sources, according to Consumers Union test ratings, are Joseph Harris Co., which has stores in Cambridge, Mass., and Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo, N. Y...
...Price Control And Profits In presenting his case that price control has not harmed the profits of corporations...
...5,245,379 5,037,143 Miles Laboratories...
...This is a particularly interesting case because it involves the question of whether a U. S. cease-and-desist order can bind foreign broadcasters...
...small furniture stores, 170 per cent...
...Drug manufacturers' spent about $7,750,000 on research during 1944, pushed along by competition to find the new, throw out the old, and to meet the pressure of the vigilant Federal Trade Commission and the Food & Drug Administration...
...6,620.742 5,847,693 General Electric...
...Here they are: Advertiser 1944 1943 Procter & Gamble ..............$ 1 8,956.615 $ 15,501,236 General Foods...
...Rare is the "good will" magazine ad that doesn't urge you to buy War Bonds, although the advertisers spend millions advertising what they can't sell to lower their tax returns to our war government...
...Daddy Rango" astrological readings, laxative herb tablets, asthma and hay fever remedies, and hair tonic ($3.50 a half-pint was the price of one special brand) were sold...
...Although cattle men and meat packers howl about OPA meat prices as a reason for the meat shortage, 8 major meat packers made profits in 1944 of $153,193,-000 before taxes and $44,110,000 after taxes...
...7,042,290 7,454,223 Colgate-Palmolive-Peet...
...5,226,865 4,057,957 American Tobacco...
...Pompeian has kept the same label and the same brand name used before 1943, when the oil was imported, and these tactics, claims the FTC, tend to make the public believe the current product is of the same quality as the former, imported oil...
...The food shortage and fear of a worse one will no doubt encourage more and bigger vegetable gardens...
...and variety chains, 250 per cent...
...In 1936 the FTC investigated the advertised claims of Daddy Rango's nostrums, found them wanting, and issued a cease-and-desist order that took Cooley and his pills off the air...
...in the People's Lobby Bulletin, "The advertiser can thus engage in 'strategic bombing' of postwar markets while depriving the Government of badly needed excess profits taxes...
...Daddy Rango...
...The Department of Agriculture has dug up an old European custom for the distress of the dolly with the hole in her stockin...
...Business Week said cynically, "Research provides the best insurance against getting into trouble in the first place, or for getting out of ii in the second...
...OPA Administrator Chester Bowles recently pointed out that 1943 profits of all manufacturing corporations were 256 per cent above the prewar base period of 1936-1939...
...6,426,669 5,290,563 American Home Products 6,369,612 5,781,917 Liggett & Myers...
...Vitamin Products Ce...
...The FTC has ordered Royal Lee, of Milwaukee, Wis., to cease advertising that his vitamin products (with the titles of Catalyn, Vitamin A Complex, Vitamin B Complex, and so on through G Complex) are "competent nutritional or corrective treatment" for "diverse diseases...
...and Francis C. Stokes Co., Vincentown, N. J. Also rated as "good" seed sources by Consumers Union are Abbott & Cobb, Comstock Ferre Co., F. W. Eberle, Farmer Seed & Nursery Co., Alexander Forbes & Co., Glick's Seed Farm, Peter Henderson, Livingston Seed Co., Robson Seed Farms, Walter L. Schell, Stumpp & Walter, Vaughan's Seed Store, and O. H. Will & Co...
...11,067,749 8,443,107 Sterling Drug...
...On The Trail Of Misleading Advertising Recent news from the Federal Trade Commission, the agency which plods along slowly but inexorably in protecting consumers from false and misleading advertising, includes: Pompeian Olive Oil...
...In court Cooley denied all charges, but several weeks ago U. S. District Judge Paul J. McCormick fined him $5,000 for failure to obey the FTC order...
...Eastern States Farmers' Exchange, West Springfield, Mass...
...Rub candle or paraffin wax, says the D. of A., on the heels and toes of hose, and they'll wear four times as long...
...The FTC has charged Pompeian with misrepresenting its oil as an imported product while "actually it is a blend of domestic and imported olive oils...
...While olive oil is a museum— well, prewar—piece in most kitchens, a fe.w very highly priced brands are for sale on grocery shelves...
...In 1939, Cooley revived his Daddy Rango radio advertising from a Mexican station just across the Mexican border...
...Profits in one manufacturing field—textile mills— went up 503 per cent in 1943...
...The Federal Trade Commission also found some advertising claim-s for the powers of V. P. Organic Mineral Tablets, CeroJ, V. P. Phosphade, Viable Acidophilus Yeast, and Cero-dyn—Royal Lee products too—false and misleading, and has ordered the company to discontinue these blurbs...
...Ferry Morse Seed Co., Detroit and San Francisco...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 16
