Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

Ads for Personal Products Are Up for Study by Radio Code Washington, D.C. — The ticklish area of the advertising of intimately personal products will come under study by a special subcommittee of the Radio Code Board of the NAB. At a meeting last week, the board also approved a series of proposed amendments to the radio code which will be submitted to NAB's board of directors for ratification. Decision to look into the matter of personal products was made when code director Howard Bell questioned whether this outright ban should be replaced by a policy of ruling on the acceptability of advertising on the basis of copy treatment. Specifically mentioned was the advertising of hemorrhoidal reme Hillman Sees No Relief in Media Costs Chicago — "Advertising efficiencies are not going to come from lower media costs," Murray Hillman, senior vice president of McCann-Erickson, Inc., last week told the Assn. of National Advertisers' workshop. Acknowledging rising ad and marketing costs as a fact of life, Hillman asserted, "Increased marketing activity and rising demand for advertising time and space has already created a short supply situation in mass media resulting in higher costs at lower efficiencies." The pressure for more time and space will be relieved somewhat by the addition of new media to the marketplace, Hillman said. "However, new media will not necessarily lead to lower cost-per-thousand because they will further fractionize the audience." By the way of explanation, Hillman declared that "although there has been some growth in leisure time in the past few years, each individual consumer only has a given number of hours a day available for exposure to advertising messages. As media becomes fractionized, a given advertising message will reach fewer and fewer people." Hillman added: "A person can only watch one television station, read one magazine or listen to one radio station at a time and the addition of more tv stations, more magazines and more radio stations will only serve to divide the audience further." Taking tv as a case in point, Hillman said that with VHP there were about as many stations operating as the airways could handle. "In a few years UHF stations will become more important and the audience will be divided into smaller pieces," he continued. "One could envision television of the future as similar to radio today with stations in the thousands and programing by stations to appeal to specific audiences." The only way to meet the challenge of increased marketing costs through effective use of advertising is to raise two questions and obtain the proper answers, Hillman said: 1. "What evidence do we have that the prospects we are talking to match the prospects defined in the role and mission of the product?" 2. "What evidence do we have that we have the most persuasive promise for the market segment defined by the role and mission of the product?" dies, but other categories will be considered, with the subcommittee expected to report back at the next meeting of the code board, which has been scheduled for Jan. 22-23 in Los Angeles. Amendments to the radio code, approved by the board, include guarding against indiscriminate use of such words as "safe," "without risk," "harmless" or similar terms in medical products advertising; making certain that advertising testimonials reflect an honest appraisal of personal experience, and cautioning particular discrimination in the acceptance, placement and presentation of advertising in news programs so that such advertising will be clearly distinguishable from news content. Videotape Talks to David Ogiivy via 'Times' Ad New York — Using the Ogiivy style and the Ogiivy photographic likeness. Videotape Center in a New York Times ad last week offered to show David Ogiivy of Ogiivy, Benson and Mather how to make even better television commercials. The ad was designed to resemble some of the famous long-copy ads (it runs 1900 words of copy) for which the veteran advertising man is well known. John Lanigan, vice president and general manager of Videotape Center, a 3M subsidiary, declared: "If we think our story is important enough to use this kind of space and to address Ogiivy, you can be sure a lot of other people are going to want to know what it is." ARB To Feature Overnight Radio Surveys Beltsville, Md. — For the first time, American Research Bureau will make overnight radio surveys of in-home listening available on a regular basis. ARB's overnight service has been providing estimates of local television audiences for a number of years. Based on the telephone coincidental survey technique, essentially the same method will be used by ARB to gather data for in-home radio listening. For the overnight radio audience surveys, ARB says it will report stations listened to, shares of audience and sets-in-use estimates between 8 a.m. and 1 1 p.m. For those clients with a stake in both radio and tv, a survey has been designed to provide information concurrently on both media. October 5, 1964 17