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Pat had come that day to suggest that I put the Meuer Fuel Company on the air. Frankly, all I knew about radio was what I heard through the speaker. But Shannon's idea that I buy a series of temperature and weather announcements seemed logical: it tied in perfectly with my product; the price was right; none of the other fuel companies were on the air; I had to advertise — and I was determined to conduct my business differently from the others.
So I not only bought one anouncement, I bought three per day; and I not only bought it for the the usual 13 week period, I signed a five-year contract with an option of five more years! (That's something radio stations don't do these days.)
I might add right here, before I explain the details of our promotion, that the plunge I took that day, 11 years ago, was a good healthy plunge, one that has brought me equally healthy returns. Here's what has happened, to get ahead of my story just a bit: The first day in business, I sold one gunnysack of coal for 40 cents. The first year in business I sold 350 tons of various kinds of
oke. Last year we sold 15,000 tons of Genuine Koppers Chicago Coke — with the aid
f no other mass advertising medium but
adio! We have spent 90 percent of our advertising money in radio from the first day to
his! (The other 10 went into calendars and •ther memorandum advertising.) Looking back now, at more than 12,000
announcements, I know that we owe a major share of our success to the method used to bring our name and our product before the people of Madison and its vicinity. But I also know that we backed up those announcements with good, sound merchandising.
In the first place, we have never used salesmen. We have never used telephone solicitations. To my way of thinking, buying coal is a disagreeable enough job to most householders, and I didn't want any salesman to irritate possible customers by knocking at their doors at inopportune moments.
Coal is a necessity; everyone has to buy it. No one buys coal when there is still some left in the bin. Because coal bins are black and never really look empty, most people don't order coal until the shovel strikes bottom. But when it does, they want coal — and they want it fast! So policy number one at my firm became: Service, prompt delivery, and no promises of delivery that could not be fulfilled to the letter.
Policy number two can be labeled: extras. We wanted to give our customers little extra touches of service so they would remember us after the coal was burned up. (Not be burned up themselves.) Examples: We were the first coal company to introduce spraying. I made a sprayer out of an old oil can, put a pistol on it and instructed our drivers to spray the empty coal bin before depositing the new coal. The sprayers contained only water, but that settled the dust that had accumulated