Here in North India, we've got permission to
put up over a thousand posters in every police
station of our state.

Can I find a design/idea from our past to
incorporate in the posters we need to put up
now?

Like the Jack Alexander article of 1941 (it
created a lot of awareness & so many people
came in).

Has any data ever been generated on the
relative effectiveness of various ways of
passing on the message of AA?

What kind of newspaper insertion, poster,
something on the radio really got people
calling in?

I'll be grateful for any help.

Aloke

- - - -

From the moderator:

Might I suggest checking with Mitchell K.
<mitchell_k_archivist@...>
(mitchell_k_archivist at yahoo.com)
about some of the highly successful materials
used in early Cleveland AA.

We know for sure that these Cleveland
techniques worked extremely well. There
was a period when there were more AA members
in Cleveland than anywhere else in the
United States.

In South Bend, Indiana, the founder of the first
AA group, Ken Merrill, was a factory owner and
highly successful advertising man, who used a
series of Christmas Eve radio broadcasts over
a period of years to turn South Bend into a
major center promoting AA growth and the
creation of new groups over a large part of
northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan.

You can find some of the material which Ken
wrote at
http://hindsfoot.org/nsbend1.html

Again, we know that the South Bend techniques
worked extremely well, and had a far reaching
and very positive effect. One of the two
most famous AA prison groups was created by
those people, and one of the best known early
black AA groups was also created in South
Bend.

There is some well known Texas material too.

Might I say that Tradition Eleven, which says
that "Our public relations policy is based on
attraction rather than promotion," is talking
about maintaining PERSONAL ANONYMITY in ads
and posters and so on.

It's not saying you can't do it, just that
you should not put up a poster with a photo
showing the face of a living AA member, and
that person's full name, as an advertisement
for AA.

It is the same issue that shows up in the
Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions, pp. 147-149,
in the story of Rule No. 62. Alcoholics
tend sometimes to be "promoter" types who
want to start grandiose projects with the
alcoholic appearing in public as a "famous
person" and having tons of money to spend,
and with all sorts of other people running
around doing all the work (while the alcoholic
takes all the public credit).

The phrase about "attraction rather than
promotion" is targeted at that same kind of
egomaniacal, arrogant, bullying, power-mad
alcoholic. We have enough problem with them
already in AA committees, intergroup offices,
and Area Assemblies, without letting them
go public! Please spare us all from that!

But in old time AA, it certainly never meant
that you could not put up notices, posters,
ads, and so on. They even held public
meetings (which were advertised in their
local newspapers) where speakers (including
clergy and judges and other people who were
neither alcoholics themselves nor AA members)
would talk about the AA program and how it
could save people's lives.