The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1916-11-18
] TOM BRAGG TELLS
ADVERTISING STORY
How Auburn Georgia Game
Got Big Crowd
RIVALS WITH GIRLS
Auburn and Georgia Alumni In
spired the Formation of the
Columbus, Ga, "Alumi-
mum" Association

Sometimes what appears to be the
most insignificant incident turns out 10
be a tremendous factor in advertising
said Thomas Bragg, director of athleucs
at Auburn, who is here arranging for the
Auburn-vanderbilt game. "All OF which
is apropos an incident that took place sew
eral years ago in Columbus, Ca, when
Auburn and the University OF georgia
played a football game there.
columbus is not nearly so large as
most OF the cities where we usually stage
football games with big teams and hao
not had a big game in many years. we
were fearful about the attendance Out
because the alumni of both Auburn anu
Georgia living in and around Columbus
70 strongly urged us to come, we de-
ctded to do So We did not require any
guarantee, although we did not expect
moro than 1000 people at the outside.
eve called meeting OF the Auburn
alumni, had a number of enthusiastic
speeches and worked them up to high
pitch. The Georgia men did the same
thing. Both crowds formed themselves
into associations to boost the game ana
each had badges made which they wore
for many days prior to the event Tne
Auburn men wore badges inscribed
Auburn Alumni Association and the
Georgia fellows wore those inscribed
Alumni Association
3 younger alumni would parade
sse ts each day with girls who also
~e se alumni badges made into long
). 1t got to be quite an addition
aAag mans social standing and was
a pig poost with the girls for him to be
able to wear one of the alumni badges.
In fact, it reached the point where the
Young men in the city who could not
qualify in this regard were practically
osfracised for the time being so far as
the girls were concerned.
FINALLY the young men who had not
attended Auburn or Georgia called a
meeting to take some action. They were
chatting under their loss of prestige. Ac-
cordingly they formed the Columbus
Aluminium Association They had their
badges and streamers made with this
inscription just as the college men had
done and appeared on the streets gaily
bedecked. They induced all the girls
they could to wear these Aluminium
badges and soon great rivally grew up
between the two factions as TO which
could get the most wearers. Some of the
Younger dluIlnl Oh <1uDutu anu OCOt o ee
were inclined to resent this apparent eff
fort to poke fun at them and wanted to
try to induce the other crowd to take off
their badges.
..Older heads, however, prevailed and
we finally persuaded them that it would
prove a splendid advertisement and
would tend to boost our crowd Every
body then took the affair in perfect good
nature and the Aluminium Association
ss8ee challenge to the Alumni Asso-
3 oas declaring that they would have
ass.rs s. arers of the Aluminium badges
III e me than there were Alumni
asult was that practically every
Is the city turned out and our
crowd was more than 400, more than
double what we had even hoped for. 1t
was most profitable piece of advertis-
ing and resulted from an apparently in
significant incident. Yes, I believe in ad-
vertising of all kinds find that it pays
manifold diVidandSo