SECRET
POLICY COMMITTEE
Thursday, 27th February 1941

Government Advertising in Periodicals

In accordance with the decision reached by the Home Planning Committee on Monday, 24th February, it is submitted that:-

The object of Government advertising is to get a given message across to the largest number of people in the shortest possible time at the lowest cost.

Since practically all the campaigns conducted by this Ministry are short term campaigns it has been the practice hitherto to use only the national morning, provincial morning, provincial evening and Sunday papers, since these most nearly satisfy the requirements set out above.

It is not suggested that periodicals are not effective media of advertising, but in the interests of economy they have hitherto been used only on a very restricted scale.

Campaigns are planned to achieve the desired objective on a minimum expenditure. To divert a portion of this minimum to periodicals would weaken the expenditure in the national Sunday, etc. papers to the point where its effectiveness would be considerably reduced. If it is decided to adopt the policy of supporting the periodical press it will be necessary to increase expenditure on each campaign by the amount of support it is desired to give.

It should be borne in mind that considerable political difficulties may be encountered in the selection of the periodicals to be used unless a formula similar in character to that which we have adopted in relation to County weekly newspapers can be devised.

It might, for example, take the form of using periodicals with a circulation of one million or over. The difficulty would arise here in that the Radio Times would automatically be included, and the Home Planning Committee have on several occasions decided against the use of this medium.

W.G.V.V.