ASSOCIATION ADVERTISING is the ad vertising of competitors to promote the sale or use of the product of an industry, e.g., the campaign to increase the buying of flow ers conducted by the Society of American Florists. This is a form of advertising which developed during the first 20 years of the 20th century. In 1925 there were 31 associations in the United States which were advertising on a national scale. Their annual advertising expenditures ranged from $30,000 to more than $1,5oo,000 each. This form of advertising has arisen out of a new conception of competition which recognized that trade rivalry is not merely that of one concern with another in the same kind of business, but rather that of one industry with another; e.g., aggressive advertising for composition roofings curtailed the sale of cedar shingles. The proprietors of the shingle mills, through their association, raised an advertising fund and began vigorously to promote the sale of their product. Behind many other associ ation campaigns there has been a similar development. It may be noted that the result is not merely an advertising battle in which each industry struggles to hold what it already has, for if the ad vertising is successful even competing industries may prosper more with advertising than without. This is illustrated by the experi ences of manufacturers of flat wall-paints and wall-papers. Before makers of the latter started advertising, their products suffered a diminution of sales because of the aggressive advertising of the former. An association advertising campaign for wall-paper re sulted in greatly increased sales without reducing the consumption of flat paints. The explanation is that people became "wall con scious," in the language of the marketing man. Whereas walls had frequently gone for years without refreshening or redecorat ing, under the stimulus of the two advertising campaigns, new wall-paper or new paint was often applied annually or biennially.
(H. E. A.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Hugh E. Agnew, Cooperative Advertising by ComBibliography.—Hugh E. Agnew, Cooperative Advertising by Com- petitors (Harper and Brothers, 1926).