Franklin D. Roosevelt

Letter to the Advertising Federation of America.

June 15, 1934

My dear Mr. Kobak:

Three years ago it was my pleasure to meet personally with the twenty-seventh annual convention of the Advertising Federation of America. Unfortunately, I cannot be with you in person this year, but I welcome this opportunity of extending a message of greeting to you.

May I call your attention to a statement I made to your organization three years ago: "There is one field of human effort which today is insufficiently touched by the benefits of advertising. In spreading the doctrine of the necessity of advertising, which your profession has so thoroughly sold the American public, you can help also to establish in the minds of people the importance of advertising the functions and the operations of the various branches of Government. If ever one thing needed advertising publicity, it is Government—national, State, county and city. Our citizens are often in abysmal ignorance as to how Government functions or how it is intended to function." If this was true three years ago, it also is true today.

The drastic economic and social emergency required an unprecedented degree of governmental action and participation in functions not normally vested in the Government.

There are few groups which can accept and fulfill the responsibility of properly educating the public as well as the advertising fraternity. You have rendered conspicuous service thus far in presenting sound interpretations of the purposes and objectives of the recovery program.

I wish for you in your consideration of these broad and specific problems of advertising a most successful convention.

Very sincerely yours,

Edgar Kobak, Esq.,

The Advertising Federation of America,

New York, N.Y.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Letter to the Advertising Federation of America. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/208416

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