Thursday, Jan. 19, 1961 University Daily Kansan
page 9
Ad Men Are Clever But Can't Do All Well
By Carol Heller
It is easy to understand why people resent advertising men.
Ad men make us lose our sense of will power. They convince us we need new cars.
They send us running downtown to clothing sales when we really can't afford to buy any new clothing. They entice us into buying seductive perfumes.
THEY FORCE us to pass up cherry pie and whipped cream so we will be pencil-slim for the modern fashions. They subject us to creams and lotions and powders in search of beauty.
And ad men accomplish these things effortlessly. When it comes to medical topics, they are still skillful. It is simple to show a photograph of a child with polio. People instantly recognize crippled children with their braces and wheel chairs.
But we sympathetic with ad men in their problem of trying to depict an intangible thing such as a mental illness victim.
THEY HAVE many ideas, but none of them are convincing. For instance, the picture of a beautiful young woman embracing a child is often used to illustrate a mental health advertisement.
"The Mentally Ill Can Come Back," reads the caption. But the picture of the mother and child is a loser. It could portray anything. The little girl probably was throwing a tantrum at the prospect of being left with a babysitter. She might have been convincing her mother that she should stay up and watch television after her father ordered her to bed.
Another illustration frequently used for mental health advertisements shows a father and five little children standing on the porch watching the mother, suitcase in hand, walk up the sidewalk toward them.
The caption reads, "The Mentally Ill Can Come Back," but again, the picture could be interpreted many ways.
MOST LIKELY, the mother has been away on vacation for a week and the family eagerly awaits her return. Inside the house, curtains have been torn down, ashes swept under the rug, lipstick dolls drawn on the walls, jam hurled at the ceiling and pajamas wound around the washing machine wringer.
Dishes are stacked to the ceiling. No wonder the family eagerly awaits Mother's return.
Still another illustration frequently used to convey the agony of mental illness victims shows a woman with disheveled hair, wide opened eyes and a look of screaming horror on her face.
This advertisement could mean anything. It could be the expression the mother assumes when she walks into her chaotic household after her family greets her on the porch. Or maybe the chocolate fudge just boiled over while she was trying to answer the telephone and the doorbell and change the baby's diaper and keep the twins from running the bathtub over.
Perhaps her husband came home with lipstick on his collar. She might have just seen a spider. She might have even just sat on a tack.
SOMETIMES WE see an advertisement showing a nude figure huddled up miserably on a bed. People who have experienced Kansas in August would never think of a mental illness victim when they see this advertisement.
The ad men would have no problem in portraying mental health illness if they could but employ music. If they could record "New Orleans," Revel's "Valse Espagnola" and Rachmanioff's "Murder Prelude" all at the same time, everyone would understand immediately the painful confusion of the mentally ill mind.
But unfortunately, or fortunately, the advertising people have not yet discovered a way to use music in their advertisements. They could write pages of descriptive copy, but no one would read it. This leaves them but one alternative: abstract art.
The picture of a harassed-looking woman can be interpreted many ways, but there is only one way to interpret a Jackson Pollock painting. Get the message?
State Aid for Blind Lagging
The educational needs of 80 per cent of the visually handicapped children in Kansas are not being met, a KU researcher charged today.
Dena Motley, research assistant in the bureau of child research, told United Press International there also is "serious question as to whether the services now being rendered are best meeting the needs of the children who do receive such services. She said Kansas ranks in the lowest third among the 43 states with community programs for education of blind children along with sighted children in the public schools.
Miss Motley said the two local programs, undertaken two years ago in Prairie Village and Wichita, serve only 8 per cent of the blind children in Kansas. She said specialists are agreed on the desirability of educating such students in regular schools for the blind in their home communities.
Estimates indicate more than half the visually handicapped children in Kansas live in 12 counties, each having 16 or more visually handicapped children. Miss Motley said
more than one third of these are concentrated in Wyandotte, Johnson, Sedgwick and Shawnee counties.
NEW KANSAN AD STAFF—The new advertising staff of the UDK for the spring semester was named today by the Kansan Board. From left to right are: Richard Horn, Kansas City, Mo., senior, classified advertising; Milo Harris, Chanute senior, advertising manager; John
Massa, Kansas City, Mo., senior, business manager; Marlin Zimmerman, Lawrence senior, national advertising manager; Bill Goodwin, Independence senior, promotion manager, and Tom Brown, Lawrence senior, circulation manager. The new staff members will begin duties Feb. 6.
UDK Ad Staff Sets Sales Record
Mark Dull, Kansas City senior and retiring business manager of the University Daily Kansan. announced the fall 1960 retail sales staff has broken the all-time retail sales record.
This year's retail staff sold 2,500 column inches more retail advertising than the previous record set last fall, a substantial $15\%$ increase over the previous record. The last record, previous to 1959, was set in 1955.
Children's Theatre Starts Kansas Tour
The K. U. Children's Theatre production of "Greensleeves Magic," an original folk tale by Marian Jonson, moved lock, stock and sets to Wandotte High School in Kansas City last week.
The show played to over 1800 per performance during its fourperformance run in Kansas City bringing the total audience to over 10.000.
The company of 23 actors and actresses did all of their own stage crew work. Three lighting technicians and one sound technician were the only extra members of the company. Jed Davis, director, said one of the principal reasons for the tours of the Children's shows is the opportunity for people in the theatre to adapt to less advantageous playing conditions.
On Saturday the company will again move, this time to Wichita.
Berlin to be Defended By U.S., JFK Says
BERLIN — (UPI) — President-elect John F. Kennedy pledged in a message to Berlin published today that the United States would fight if necessary to defend West Berlin.
Kennedy said, in the message published in a special issue of the "Berlin Illustrated," that a strong stand on Berlin and a strong U.S. policy toward Russia were the two essential elements needed to restore the unity of Germany.
TEXACO
MARFAK
LUBE
JOB
To insure quieter, smoother over-all car performance give your car a Marfak Lube job.
BOB HARRELL TEXACO
9th & Miss. VI 3-9897
THE RETAIL STAFF members are Milo Harris, Chanute, Bill Goodwin, Independence, Mike McCarthy, Prairie Village, Dick Horn, Kansas City, Warren Haskins, Kansas City, and Duane Hill, Chanute, Rudy Hoffman, Hutchinson, is the Advertising Manager. All are seniors.
Mark Dull was a member of the fall 1959 retail sales staff that set the previous retail advertising sales record. He led that staff with an individual sales record. He was promotion manager of the UDK before accepting the position of business manager. He has served on the Kansas Board for two years.
"The position of Business Manager of a daily collegiate newspaper is good on-the-job-training for the college student. It gives him a chance to flex his muscles in coping with the every day problems of running a newspaper profitably," he said.
"IT GIVES HIM a chance to apply the knowledge received in advertising courses."
Dull attended the All Collegiate Press Convention in Chicago during Thanksgiving. There he was able to compare the campus newspaper and its problems first hand with college newspapers all over the nation. Dull is also currently the president of the Kansas chapter of Phi Kappa Psi.
Curing With Kindness
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. — (UPI) — Insurance man Ray Waddell and glass firm owner E. B. Vester destroyed a bandit's nerve with a kindness during a holdup.
The pair talked the bandit out of his gun, bought him some groceries, gave his dog some food and the bandit $2.
Television is the new oplate of the masses—James Slinkard
813 Mass. McCoy's VI 3-2091