186 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



of money that you are going to spend for advertising on a budget basis? 

 On that question there may be a great difference of opinion, even among 

 men and women who are expert and efficient in fair work. Some advise 

 spending a great deal more money for publicity and advertising than 

 others do. Other fairs do not believe in spending very much of anything, 

 believing that they can get a great deal of their publicity for nothing, but 

 I am going to tell you one thing, that with all of the agitation that has 

 been conducted throughout the country for years by people who are in 

 the business of selling advertising and publicity, it is becoming increas- 

 ingly difficult year after year to get your advertising and publicity for 

 nothing. You have got to become convinced of the fact that you have got 

 to begin to spend more and more money for your advertising and pub- 

 licity merely because there is a campaign being continually conducted 

 throughout the country against what is called free publicity. I believe 

 myself that a fair is a public institution. Most of them are educational 

 institutions. Most of them are doing a great deal of good In the commu- 

 nity, and there is more reason and more license for asking for free 

 publicity than with most of the institutions that do, and yet, on the other 

 hand, there is a limit even to the amount of free publicity that a fair can 

 expect to get. 



Now, the question immediately arises. How much money are you gong 

 to spend for publicity? There is only one way to estimate it, and that is 

 to estimate it on a percentage basis. There isn't any other way to esti- 

 mate it. Now, some persons may say, "We will spend 5 per cent of our 

 total receipts — of our anticipated total receipts" or "We will spend 10 

 per cent, or 15 per cent, or 20 per cent, or we will spend what we will." As 

 a matter of fact, I cannot conceive, myself — I am just using the average 

 instance — I cannot conceive, myself, how any fair can make much of a 

 success of their fair from an advertising viewpoint if they do not spend 

 at least 10 per cent of their average receipts. I know there are fairs 

 all over the country, and there are. fairs here, if you were to figure out 

 you would not be spending two or three per cent, or four or five per cent, 

 of your receipts; but I cannot see, myself, how we can get the results 

 unless you spend at least eight or ten per cent of your average receipts. 

 Of course, there is a limit to the amount of money you can spend for 

 publicity. I believe I spoke before a meeting of the Iowa Fair Managers 

 here this spring, and I quoted this instance, and I am going to leave it 

 with you, only I have got one more year to add to it. 



I have been in direct charge of the advertising department of the Min- 

 nesota State Fair for the past seven years. We used to spend for the 

 Minnesota State Fair from $15,000 to $20,000 for advertising and publicity. 

 It hovered around that point for a number of years, and we never seemed 

 to get anywhere. Now, that is a great deal of money, and at that time it 

 amounted to round about 10 or 12 per cent of the total receipts. I am 

 speaking in broad figures now. Some of the members of the board felt 

 that we should increase our advertising budget. One of the members was 

 a manufacturer of shoes from St. Paul, a very successful business man, 

 and he has made his business successful largely because he was always 

 liberal with his advertising. We have a paper manufacturer from 



