Radio showmanship (Sept 1940-May 1941)

Selling the Brand Instead of Just Milk Is an Age -Old Dairy Problem, Here's the Story of One Smart Solution All milk comes from cows. Obvious? Certainly. But when the problem of selling one specific brand of milk, not just milk in general, becomes your problem, then the obvious becomes mighty important. Curtiss C. Brown, Netherland Dairy's (Syracuse, N. Y.) general manager, tossed just this problem into my lap some time ago. "There's plenty of consumer demand for milk," he said, "but we want to train a consumer demand for Netherland milk, exclusively. We want to hear a customer ask her grocer for a quart of Netherland's, not a quart of milk." With the aid of our entire radio department, I undertook the task of building a radio program that would exactly suit Mr. Brown's needs. There were many, factors to be considered. Because research and sales reports proved that the great bulk of milk purchases are made by mothers, we decided to direct our program entirely to mothers. Because we learned that every dairy loses 20 percent of its customers during a given year, and that this loss is a gradual one, we decided to plan a small consistent advertising campaign rather than a spasmodic large scale scheme of promotion. And because we wanted a time period when mothers would be most likely to give our program complete attention, we selected 8:45 A.M. to 9 A.M. — those few moments after children and husband are gone for the day and the housework has not yet begun — and scheduled our program over Syracuse station WTRL for every morning except Sunday. Then we went to work on the body of the program. For the "leader" wt chose the one subject that would hold a deep interest for all mothers — babies'. We utilized the proven ess of the newspaper's vital statistic* Column, allotted two minutes on ea< h pro :; to the announcements of births to Syra i use mothers and followed through with a of a beautiful baby hook. Sentimental bal lads, the reading of homey verses and everyday philosophy made up the rest of the program. Nothing spectacular, just quiet, friendly radio entertainment, in almost direct contrast with the super-emotional script shows on the air at the same time. By now our program seemed (1) perfectly suited to women, (2) frequent enough, (3) relatively inexpensive, (4) comprehensive enough to do an effective selling job for almost anybody's milk. We still needed to tie it up definitely with Netherland Milk. We found our answer in the Netherland trade-mark. Thousands of dollars had been spent in the past to familiarize the public with the Dutch boy and girl flanking each cream top Netherland bottle. To tie this valuable trade-mark in with the radio show, we brought the Nethland twins to life. A boy and girl with suitable radio voices were secured, and one-minute skits were written for them for each broadcast. Commercials were kept out of the skits, and made as entertaining as possible with their tales of the mishaps and misadventures of two typical children. Here's a sample sketch: GIRL: I'm not trying to kid you, brother. Mother's going to discontinue your allowance for the summer. BOY: Holy gee. I don't see what made her think of a thing like that. This is awful. GIRL: She wants you to learn the value of money. BOY: Know the value of money? That's silly. I know the value of money. A dollar is a dollar ... a dime is a dime ... a nickel is a nickel. I knew that when I was a little bit of a tot. GIRL: You're just a little bit of a tot now. BOY: Then I'm too small to work. Mowing lawns and things like that might be bad for me. Bringing the trade-mark to life enabled the! products and services of the dairy to be more] easily identified and remembered. It tied the program up definitely with Netherland Milk instead of just anybody's milk. The set up BOUnded good on paper . . . here'-, what actually happened. Aftei two weeks on the air. with the program listed in the newspaper schedule simply ilk Sales Thru the Ai