Curtis Plows In

When the green grass grows all around in U. S. Business, the Saturday Evening Post is the magazine that is head-of-the-house (Curtis Publishing Co.), that reaps most of the money from the long green grass which is Advertising.

Through its own analysts, salesmen and balance sheets, Curtis Co. can learn promptly, authoritatively what condition Business is in. Last month Advertising Director Fred A. Healy of the Curtis group (he has seven branch advertising managers under him) had these figures to contemplate:

Satevepost advertising first nine months of 1929 4,144 pp.

First nine months 1930 3,930 pp.

Decrease 5-2%

Average decrease all general magazines carrying over 500 pp. of advertising 6.7%

Last week the house of Curtis began to do something which other publishers had been hoping and predicting for months that Curtis would do -plow in some of the profits of former years to bring greenness back to the drab winter fields of 1930-31. With the approval of Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis and Editor George Horace Lorimer, Mr. Healy accepted the services of President Arthur H. Kudner of Erwin, Wasey & Co., the man and agency who won a 1930 Bok Award for their post-crash slogan: "All right, Mister, now that the headache's over, let's go to work" (TIME, March 10). Mr. Kudner had prepared for Mr. Healy a million-dollar program of vigorous "cheer-up" messages signed by the Satevepost, to appear in 38 "key city" newspapers and eight magazines over a period of several months. The first instalment was read throughout the land last week, entitled "Where Do We Go From Here?" Excerpts:

". . . Now is a fine time to supplant the idle question 'How's business?' with 'Where's business?' Better than that, take a good, unwishful, morning-after look at your product, your sales plans, yourself. Is the commodity you make and hope to sell, styled, finished, priced to present needs-if your market knew the facts about it would it sell itself? Is your selling-energy out full-limit, are your sales and advertising plans extraordinarily gauged to extraordinary resistances-or are you cutting the power just as you are trying to make the hill? . . . [The Saturday Evening Post] is moving straight ahead more serviceably than ever before into the greatest business era the world has ever seen, and if you are not insensible to opportunity you are cordially invited to come along.

Soon after the first Satevepost spread appeared last week, Copy-Writing President Kudner of the Erwin, Wasey Agency took plane to his 64,000-acre ranch at Carrizozo, N. Mex. There to ride horseback, there also to work on future advertising layouts in his cinemagnificent home which contains marble floors and doors transplanted from Chicago's oldtime Palmer House. Onetime office-devil of his father's country newspaper at Lapeer, Mich., Adman Kudner has been a concert singer, police reporter, magazine contributor, versifier, political writer. Framed over his desk is his favorite definition of advertising, a quotation from Fred Patzel, 1926 World Champion Hog Caller: "You've got to have appeal as well as power in your voice. You've got to con-.vince the hogs you have something for them."

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