Business: Needed: A Cleanup

"Dishonest advertising is here. It is real. And whatever the percentage, the amount is large and is not diminishing." So wrote Fairfax M. Cone, executive committee chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding, Inc., last week in a memo to his Chicago staff. Cone stiffly warned that "the problem is not going to be solved by gentle pressure from the side of the angels or by the slow processes of education. To try to ignore it as a small percentage of all advertising is to be insensitive to right and wrong. How can four different cigarettes all be lowest in nicotine, lowest in tars; how can three different headache remedies all work fastest?"

As one means toward reform, "Fax" Cone urged advertising media to demand proof of claims and promises before publishing them. Trade groups should stop evading the issue. The Advertising Federation of America, said Cone, is approaching the problem of cleaning up advertising "like cucumber growers during National Pickle Week." The American Association of Advertising Agencies, to which Cone himself belongs, has recently revised its internal reviewing of members' advertising techniques. "But it is significant that no one has ever been kicked out of the association for cutting capers."