Radio showmanship (Sept 1940-May 1941)

CIAPTEB 11 and sales results has shown clearly the benefits of the cumulative effect of continuous broadcasting, in curves of steady upward progress. And here's a fact that bears eloquent witness. During the first year of Merita's sponsorship, the largest advertising budget in the company's history was devoted exclusively to The Lone Ranger and its attendant merchandising. However, after the first year, sales had progressed to such a point where Merita was able to resume newspaper advertising as well. Now, at the start of the Ranger's third year for Merita, the newspaper lineage has reached the volume it had in Merita's pre-Ranger days. This is truly a success story to rank with any in radio's record book. However, it is important to stress one fact. Thorough and comprehensive merchandising, carefully planned and coordinated in support of The Lone Ranger, has played a vital part in the success Merita has realized. Here again, it is our emphatic belief that continuity of effort applies with the same importance to the merchandising support given a radio program. Xo one can expect a program to deliver anything approaching its potential results without the support and follow -through of a complete merchandising campaign. Nor can you be content to let the program, once established with initial merchandising, proceed on its merry way without continuing the merchandising effort consistently. Accordingly, in using The Lone Ranger for Merita, we have made comprehensive merchandising a vital factor week in and week out. The purposes of the merchandising program have been: 1) to build audience; 2) to as TUNE iN •m LONE RAN6EF Sponsored by Merita 1P.M. sociate Merita and The Lone Ranger with each other in the mind of consumers; 3) to stimulate the greatest enthusiasm and selling effort on the part of Merita's own selling organization; 4) to increase dealer cooperaand good will; and 5) to carry still further the consumer loyalty engendered by the program and its radio adjunct, The Lone Ranger Safety Club. Launching of the program was accompanied by numerous audience-building activities, including 24-sheet posters, Lone Ranger outsert bands on Merita Bread, dealer broadslides, point-of-sale display material, promotional tie-ups with theaters and department stores, and a plethora of publicity and exploitation activities. Lone Ranger ten-gallon cowboy hats were worn by Merita's five hundred route salesmen, on broadcast days and on special merchandising occasions, with dramatic effect on trade and public. Hundreds of thousands of Lone Ranger masks were snapped up on one Saturday morning alone, in a special Lone Ranger Hallowe'en promotion. So effective were the Lone Ranger outsert bands that Lone Ranger inserts were soon embodied for regular use in the wrappers themselves, and Lone Ranger cake tags placed on all Merita Cakes. Point-of-sale display material regarding the program has been periodically used, as has a series of organization broadsides and dealer newspapers, designed in a variety of ways to emphasize constantly the value of the program to the trade. Probably the most unusual of all Merita's activities in conjunction with The Lone Ranger was the Lone Ranger tie-up in Merita's newspaper advertising last spring. At that time, Merita launched a newspaper series that might truly be called "Lone Ranger broadcasts in print." The series of seven ads featured a serial story "How the Lone Ranger Captured Silver." This and its illustration consumed the largest part of each of the 60inch insertions. The selling copy was comparable to the commercials on a radio program, telling "How Merita Captured Freshness" (and other product attributes). At this writing Merita is in the midst of yet another large-scale newspaper campaign strongly associated with The Lone Ranger. Using half-page space for each of a series of 11 insertions, the current series features another serial story. " 'The Life of Tonto,' by the Lone Ranger," illustrated with specially posed Indian-life photographs taken by Hiller, of Underwood and Underwood. The^ associated product theme features "The Staff of Life, by Merita." Because of the tremen DECEMBER, 1940 131