COOPERATIVE ADVERTISING

by MosherStory Hutchins '17. New York: RonaldPress, 1953. xiii, 255 pp., $6.00.

This is for the specialist. The publisher gives an accurate description of the book: "a valuable handbook and guide." Cooperative advertising is defined by Mosher, a consultant after retiring from his own agency, as varying degrees and patterns of participation in advertising by the manufacturer and by dealers. Because of different values placed on this participation, participants often disagree on the criteria of manufacturer-dealer cooperative advertising. Yet he documents his statement that there are few consumer-goods campaigns in which some manufacturers do not cooperate with their dealers in one or more media. He excludes "horizontal" cooperative advertising by competitors to promote their entire industry (such as the Hat Foundation, for example), and writes only of the "vertical" type between manufacturer and dealer for the same product.

For each of twelve media, each of which is discussed in a separate chapter, the analy. Sis is structured on a uniform basis. With minor variations, this pattern of eight sub-topics is followed: a classification system, cost balance and the dealer's share in making decisions, selection of specific media, evaluation of the advertising, timing, pre-testing, and follow-through.

A lot of material is, obviously, condensed in useful handbook form. In theory this guide should do what the author, in the Preface, hopes for it: "to strengthen the good and eliminate the bad" in a field where mediocrity of performance has been notorious. The alternative of doing a good job is to supply ammunition to those critics who sweepingly regard all advertising as wasteful, uneconomic. This book can reduce waste effort, time, and money and help produce advertising that does a specific job better than it can be done by other methods of selling.