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Show Serving the Public It isn't an ordinary ad. It Is not directed primarily to the people without homes, without nurses, it is directed to the persons and organizations organi-zations who can help bring these facts home to the general public to you. It is an ad written by and about the Advertising Council, concerning con-cerning an operation of which almost al-most everybody is conscious but about which few people know the details. It is an operation based on giving away what the givers orSinarily sell advertising space, advertising ideas, advertising copy. It answers the question: "Why doesn't somebody some-body DO something?" The reply is it's given in works as well as words "Somebody IS." The council grinds nobody's axe except yours, the public's, seeks no profits, asks no expense account, has only one objective: To make America Amer-ica a still better place than it already al-ready is. The Advertising Council was born a week after Pearl Harbor when Donald Nelson, about to take over chairmanship of the war production board, called in a group of advertising advertis-ing executives and discussed with them what the average citizen could do to help victory and incidentally, what would make him do it. Now you are reading and hearing the results of the council's peacetime peace-time efforts they are embodied in the various forms of advertising of many firms, as spots on the radio, many other places. The council is providing suggestions, ideas, radio fact sheets and other material to members of business firms, unions, civic groups and other citizens who can put that tremendous power, advertising, ad-vertising, to work personalizing big national problems. What does the word "advertise" mean to you? Does it mean "to warn, to give notice to. to inform, to notify, to make known to"? Or does it mean some sort of high-powered high-powered skull-duggery involving skyscrapers, sky-scrapers, Hollywood blondes, billboards bill-boards and singing commercials? The first definition was written by Webster (not the senator, the gentleman gen-tleman who wrote a dictionary). The other concepts are the result of a rash of lampoonery of advertising which, while some of it may contain con-tain a grain of truth, looks to me like biting the hand that is not feeding feed-ing you. The big, bad novel about adver-tising adver-tising at its blooming worst was called "The Hucksters." a best seller sell-er highly salted with erotica whic'i has been turned into a movie. There is no accounting for tastes, and I won't object if you see the picture and like it. All- I ask: "Don't accept ac-cept the advertising sequences as the literal truth. There is much about advertising I could loudly decry (and often do) at the risk of biting the hand that Is not feeding me. But there are "hucksters" who are undertaking projects of a very decent sort of which you may not be aware. Maybe in these past few months you've asked yourself: Why doesn't somebody DO something about a lot of things. Something about the people killed or injured in automobile accidents every year. Something about housing. The war ended two years ago. Yet the land of the free still isn't providing homes for the brave. Shame on all of us! Something about the shortage of medical services. Patients are neglected, neg-lected, hospital wards closed because be-cause the nation desperately needs nurses. Training them is a long-range, long-range, national job. Something about world trac e. Our economic future depends on 'lnham-pered 'lnham-pered world trade. Yet pressure groups make our world trade a football foot-ball for selfish interests. Something about the nation's health. Between the ages of 15 and 34, tuberculosis is our greatest killer. kill-er. At any given time. 50C.000 people peo-ple have it. But they don't know it. Alarming? You bet it is. Something about our kids. Your children are getting a rcugh deal In school. Too few teachers. Too antiquated equipment, old textbooks or none at all. Make you mad? It should. What has all this to do with advertising? ad-vertising? Just this: The above words were copied from an advertisement, adver-tisement, a full-page advertisement in a recent New York Times, and perhaps other papers by this time. |