Five thousand advertising potentates from 20 countries left Berlin last week after four days of concentrated speech-applauding, back-patting, beer-quaffing, sightseeing. Contours of the International Advertising Convention included:
World Peace. As at all conventions nowadays, World Peace was popular. International Advertising Association President Charles Clark Younggreen led it down the aisle opening day when he said: "We have come here to present the credo that human and national differences can be settled otherwise than by appeal to arms." England's Lord George Allardice Riddell, newspaper bigwig, gave it a seat when he said: "Who of us sitting here today would twelve years ago have predicted that Americans, Frenchmen and Englishmen would meet in Berlin to discuss advertising methods?" France's Dr. Marcel Knecht, secretary of Le Matin, gave it a place on the platform when he spoke on "Advertising and World Peace," suggested that if ever a United States of Europe should be formed, it would be to collaborate with the U. S. A., with everybody working in unison, bound together, of course, by advertising. Finally world peace was made a prime member of the convention by a resolution: "That this Congress . . . solemnly declares peace and international goodwill are essential to industrial progress and commercial success."
Col. Percy C. Burton of the London Press Exchange gave a voice to the business of Peace. His suggestion: let the League of Nations spend $10,000,000 advertising itself. Shouted he: "I accuse the League of Nations of stupidity in hiding its light under a bushel and of profoundly misunderstanding the psychology of the masses of mankind in failing to take advantage of the magnificent opportunities which it has of popularizing its doings. . . . !"
Boosters. In the U. S., approximately $1,500,000,000 is annually expended on advertising. Natural was it for the Greatest Advertising Country to tell the Lesser Advertising Countries how to advertise. Prime among U. S. boosters was dynamic, hard-plugging, big-thinking President Younggreen.
Much has he traveled, many are the famed people he has met. In Milwaukee, where he has an agency, he headed the Lindbergh reception committee two years ago. The policemen there call him "C. C." Though not feeling well one day in Rome, he won a bet by getting an audience with the Pope on 24-hours' notice. He has hand-shaken Mussolini. He also tells how, slipping into an exclusive London night club, he and Mrs. Younggreen came face to face with Edward of Wales. "My wife," says Mr. Younggreen, "touched the Prince."
In Berlin, Mr. Younggreen made a ringing speech in which he called advertising "the Mercury of the Gods of Industry."