A special correspondent reports: Lord Robens, the self-styled miners! © best friend and former Parlianentary Labour leader, boosted advertising in an introduction to a special survey on advertising in the Financial Times on May 4th. Our venerable Lord, who is President of the Advertising Association in addition to being Chairman of the NCB, wrote like an Enoch Powell-type tory: "The life-blood of our economic system is competition" and ",...the whole of the Western world is geared to the competitive system and even the Soviet bloc has to meet competition in world markets." His article concludes, “Britain needs good advertising men just as much as good production engineers. Success in both vital activities ought to be equally honoured." Considering the amount of money spert on advertising in Britain it appears likely that a large number of 'good advertising men' are being honoured (financially, anyway ) as much as the miners whose wages Robens seems determined to hold down, More important than Robens' utterances are the figures given on advertising expenditure,
Advertising consumes about 2% of the national income and in 1962 this amounted to £479 million. The estimated figure for 1963 is just under £500 million, All the detailed figures in this article are of 1962 but it is certain that the figures for 1963 will be roughly in the same proportions, Nearly half the amount spent was on advertising in the press (£220 million); television came next with £83 million, and a surprisingly high item was that of catalogues and similar publications at £41 million. Also worth noting was the £16 million spent on free samples.
Unilever came top of the table of individual advertisers with an expenditure of £14.5 million, the remainder of the 'top ten' weres Imperial Tobacco, £6m.; Proctor and Gamble, £5.5M.; Mars/Petfood, £4.5me3 Beechams, £3.5m.3 Cadburys, £3.1m.; Gallahers, £3m.; Reckitt and Colman, £2.3m.;3 Carreras Rothman, £2.2m.; and Rowntree, £2,2m. Of these, readers will note that 3 cigarette firms spent well over £lln,.
Perhaps we could agree with Lord Robens that advertising is essential for what he calls the 'competitive system' and what we would call capitalism, Surely a Labour Government operating a 'Clause Four' policy will have to direct all these millions into more productive channels?