THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADVERTISING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, I hate to say so, but I do not find Miss Dorothy L. Sayers convincing. If I felt the same about her detective stories, she would lose a most faithful reader, but fortunately it is quite the other way.
The blarney of the modern advertising profession would not take in Lord Peter Wimsey for a moment—nor his man Bunter. If it is " quite true " (as Miss Sayers admits) that the price of the article is out of all proportion to the cost—for whatever reason— then there is something radically wrong with the method of distribution. The case against the modern distributive machine is that it is a vested interest, grown to monstrous proportions, which uses snob-appeal and every other form of credulity quite unscrupulously. " Profit on the manufacturer's costs " is the one objective. Human nature may be all that Miss Sayers suggests, but to trade on it brings us into the region of criminology. Will not Miss Sayers hunt the crimintl ?.
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