BOK COMPETITION OPENS EXHIBITION

The exhibition of advertisements entered in the Bok Competition for the Harvard Advertising Awards is opened to the public today, and all the entries will be on display in the reading room of the Baker Library in the Business School.

This is the only day that the public is to be admitted to this tremendous show of thousands of advertisements. Three hundred and fourteen competitors from all parts of the country have submitted their advertising, making this year's exhibition 25 per cent larger than that of last winter. Only work published between January 1, 1929, and January 1, 1930, is eligible for consideration. On Thursday and Friday, the exhibition will be closed, and the Jury of Award will consider the advertisements and choose the winners of the awards. These will be announced at a dinner in their honor to be held at the Harvard Business School in February.

The advertisements on display are comprised of the work which has been before the public eye during the past year. The work is grouped according to entries, all the pieces of one sort being placed together. One of the advertisements of local interest is the large Old Gold proof demonstrating the fact that Harvard was the first college where Old Gold failed to win first place in the blindfold test. The work of Norman Rockwell, John Held Jr., and other men whose work has appeared in local and national advertising during the year may now be seen together.

The awards, which amount to approximately $14,000 every year, have been offered annually since 1923 by the late Edward Bok, journalist and philanthropist, for the best advertisements in various classes, submitted by any individual or organization. There are four classifications under which the advertising matter will be judged; for distinguished services to advertising a gold medal will be given, for the most outstanding individual advertisements there will be four prizes of $1000 each, for excellence of advertising campaigns four premiums of $2000 each are offered, and an individual prize of $2000 will be adjudged for research work in advertising.

Mr. Bok and the officers of Harvard University made the arrangement that the first five years of the awards should be a probationary period to test the soundness and practicability of the conception. These five years have now passed and the awards are being continued in the conviction that they have proved themselves a means of encouraging merit and stimulating improvement in the field.