We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
AN radio sell a service? Can radio sell an institution and through this, the merchandise that institution offers? The answer to both questions is yes, and the P. J. Nee
Co., Washington, D. C, has the facts and
figures to prove it.
In July of this year we will celebrate our fifth consecutive year on the air. Throughout this period, we have endeavored to establish the P. J. Nee Co. more as an institution than merely as a place to buy furniture. We feel about radio advertising just as we do about merchandise in our two stores; that it is a never ending assignment. To merely put a radio program on the air and wait for results is a sad mistake. For those who take the trouble to learn the why's and wherefore's of radio, radio is rapidly surpassing newspapers as a medium of commercial presentation because radio offers leeway to creative imagination. It offers to a progressive sponsor a chance to personalize his product in a way that no other medium can provide.
Our first program. Captains of Industry, was a transcribed dramatization of the lives of leading Americans. To this we soon added another 15-minute transcription featuring Donald Novis and Felix Knight. A year later we took on our first live show, Dreams Come Trw^, a musical program over WRC. Because it was flexible enough to meet seasonal and promotional changes, yet inflexible in its
42
aaammot
News Broadcasts Neweii Writes Maury Nee, Adv
consistency, this was the beginning of a very successful advertising venture. Though immediate, direct results were intangible and still are, our overall picture brightened conspicuously. That year saw the P. J. Nee finish the year with an increase of eight per cent when other stores were laboring to equal their figures of the preceding year.
While the show has been considerably dressed up since then, and is now aired under the title of Dreamhouse, it is still pulling business for us, and our volume increase is constantly growing. By 1940, when we were thoroughly convinced of the job that radio could do, we directed only 17 per cent of our advertising budget to newspapers, and increased our radio appropriation to 60 per cent of the total appropriation. Direct mail and other miscellaneous ways account for the remainder. We were rapidly becoming known as radio advertisers exclusively.
In catering to the public's interest in particular types of programs, we have used music, sports, friendly chats with our home consultant, and news.
One noteworthy digression from our musical type of show was our sponsorship over WOL of Redskin football games play-by-play. In our basic advertising plan of bringing the finest in musical entertainment and sporting events to the people of Washington, these games achieved a very high spot. Direct response for the days immediately following the games was outstanding, even though we merchandised these games only through the use of institutional copy.
RADIO SH OWM A NSH I P