Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1946)

STATION PROMOTION What promotes the station, creates listener interest, promotes the advertiser. PROMOTION YARDSTICK Frank H. Elphicke, manager of Vancouver's CKWX, has announced the station's adoption of a new type promotion and merchandising plan, based on a CKWXdeveloped Promotion Yardstick. The yardstick will be used to measure all CKWX commercial program accounts to determine the share of station promotion which each should receive. The promotion value of an account is arrived at by a calculation of station time, audience appeal, public service qualities and sponsor co-operation. The station awards points on each of these counts, and the total point-score is then converted to actual promotion. The complete promotion campaign for each account is blue-printed before the program series begins, and the sponsor receives a schedule of promotional activities that have been planned in support of his CKWX campaign. The station has issued a four-page brochure containing an explanation of the Promotion Yardstick, which it describes as "a policy instituted to eliminate the catch-ascatch-can method of station promotion which has failed to keep in step with the growth of radio itself." Explaining the necessity of basing the yardstick on several factors, the station points out that promotion is no cut-and-dried commodity and therefore requires a measurement based on controlled flexibility. The time factor, of course, will parallel the dollar value of the program series and guarantee the advertiser his equitable share of promotional service. Points awarded for production value, the public service character of the series, and the extent to which the sponsor himself co-operates in making the station's promotion a harder-hitting job are called bonus points. They could, if the program earned a 100 per cent score in each department, amount to as much as 50 per cent of the basic time measurement. The Promotion Yardstick was developed by Don McKim, CKWX promotion manager, who returned to the station after three and a half years with the Royal Canadian Air Force, at the first of the year. The announcement of its inauguration as part of station policy follows months of research and experimental work. "We feel that the yardstick will be of tremendous value in putting the station's promotional work on a new and more efficient level," says manager (Tiny) Elphicke. "In addition, it guarantees the advertiser his fair share of planned promotion and assures him of our interest in the success of his CKWX campaign." DOLLARS MAKE SENSE In the last analysis, radio stands or falls as an advertising medium on the how-many-for-how-much basis. Statistics of this nature are more or less available to the national advertiser, but it's pretty much a rule-of-thumb proposition for most local and regional sponsors. To make information of this kind available to its hometown time buyers, WOC, Davenport, la., talks the howmany-for-how-much language for individual programs to the benefit of those who use the WOC facilities. Over a five months' period, 471 Quad City homes were telephoned at the time Menu for Moderns was on the air. 11.2 per cent of all homes called reported they were listening to the program when the telephone rang. Based on the total number of Quad City homes in the Metropolitan area, only, it represented 7,286 homes listening to an average broadcast of Menu for Moderns. As a clincher to the fact that the advertiser could get 7,280 families to give favorable attention to an advertising message. WOC pointed out that a penny postcard would cost nearly twice as much for postage alone, with no assurance that the message would be read. COPS THE PRIZE An over-all promotion campaign didn't go unrewarded for WFPG, Atlantic City, N. J. When the shouting and the tumult died away, WFPG came up with one of the ten prizes for the contest conducted between February 7 and April 15 for Tom Brenenman's and Hedda Hopper's programs broadcast over the ABC network. Special events broadcasts, station announcements, window displays, etc., were all a part of the campaign. A Hat Auction on the Boardwalk on Easter Sunday, with the money turned over to charity, was the climax of the campaign. Thousands of people witnessed the auction, and 30 minutes of the event was aired over WFPG. Second special events broadcast featured the presentation of a $60,000 solid gold hat to Hedda Hopper by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HAT MANUFACTURERS. WFPG's program director, Edgar A. Sweet, supervised the entire campaign. IT'S A DATE! (Continued from page 297) the series. Daily newspaper plugs were used for one week, and the show received a feature spot in the WTCN Presents newspaper series. Newspaper teasers on Donaldson newspaper advertisements, announcements on the Joan Terry radio show, elevator placards and display cards in the Boys' Department and the TeenETTE Shop were also used. What does it all add up to? There are big plans for the fall season, when the Hi Time show will originate from the store on Saturday afternoon. Plans call for more direct tie-ins with the Teenette Club; a newspaper for club members; bigger and better inducements to bring out e\en bigger and better crowds. As far as the L. S. Donaldson Company is concerned, tlie teen age group may re])resent a limited group, in terms of the si/e of the radio audience potential, but a whopping big Hooper doesn't mean a thing unless it can be translated into the terms of sales. Here's an audience that will never break any local Hooper ratings, biu as long as its a responsive audience in the terms of sales, Donaldson's is willing to keep right on diieding a sales message at that audience. • 322 • RADIO SHOWMANSHIP