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Show ELIilTI BUI FROM d PUBLICITY Federal Truck Distributor Finds It Pays to Stick to Facts. A leading metropolitan newspaper recently re-cently published an elaborate and highly instructive booklet on the truck merchandising merchan-dising conditioTis in Hs territory, and therein, discussing advertising literature, handed tho palm to the Federal Motor Truck company, with these words: "The literature produced by this company is attractive as to form, color, illustration, sales argument. It seems to be more highly specialized than that of its competitors. com-petitors. They publish many specialised booklets with such titles as 'Hauling Lumber by Motor Truck,' 'Motor Trucks for Municipalities,' 'This Is the Motor Age of Marketing, 'Speed Un the Coal Deliveries,' 'Motor Trucks in the Oil Business.' Ij. B. Dudley, advertising manager of the Federal Motor Truck company, states that the same principles governing the production of Federal sales literature also govern production of Federal press news. In the iirst place, it must, in both cases, be news. The Federal company believes in making its news straight news, and it makes its advertising as nearly straight news as advertising can be, and still maintain its selling character. "Too much publicity for the automotive editorial columns is 75 per cent bunk, 20 per cent adjectives and 6 per cent real 'stuff,' " says A. K. Savage, local Federal truck distributor. "In our advertising we have been handing the public facts about Federal performance and general truck performance in many lines of business, busi-ness, and in our stories or items for newspaper editorial use, which, like other truck and motor car manufacturers, wo send out from time to time, we tell hard, news facts abort what has been done, what is being done, or what will be done in the world of transportation, and the standard by which the news value of all such facts is judged ia the query, Ts it interesting to the man who ordinarily reads the automotive news?' If it is, we send it out, and if it is not we file lit away carefully in the well-known waste-paper basket. "During the war we reduced the number num-ber and length of even these stories of practical savings of time and money with motor trucks because white paper and -reading-column space were the two things editors lacked. Tet even with this curtailment there were more Federal performance per-formance stories .run in the public press; than ever before". 1 "We believe the business public wants business stories of haulage by motor truck, and that is the kind Federal sends out. We have an abundance of them, too. Every mail brings some from Federal Fed-eral owners, which are, in turn, passed along for perusal by others." |