Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

PROBING THE CURRENTS AND UNDERCURRENTS OF BROADCAST ADVERTISING place at McCann-Erickson and Y&R. If there's a moral in this, it could be: media directors as a whole aren't given to using the job as a platform for their own advancement. Peak daytime for first quarter Look for a virtual sellout situation in daytime network tv to carry over into the first quarter of 1965. Tending to support this expectation: P&G, General Foods, Dow Chemical and Scott Paper have all indicated to the networks they'll be heavying up daytime spreads come January. For General Foods, in particular, the proposed move is real news. Until the current quarter GF was inclined to look upon daytime as a second-class citizen. Advertising ratio vs. GNP A deplorable trend that the world of advertising might ponder: In 1960 advertising expenditures constituted 2.37 percent of the gross national product. In 1963 the ratio dropped to 2.20 percent. At this rate advertising's total share of the total economy, it is predicted, will slide off to 2.17 percent by 1970. The reasons for the downward drift has been a topic of conjecture among statesmen of the advertising field in recent years. One basic reason cited is the snobbishly indifferent attitude toward advertising at the corporate top level, an attitude that might be largely due to their personal remoteness from the actual market place. An isolated throne room, paneled in oak, is not, it might be said, conducive to an intimate experience of the interplay of advertising in the moving of goods or the molding of a corporate image. Next with cold water detergent? Soap marketers report that both P&G and Colgate have their labs hard at work on the mission of developing a cold water detergent, which, of course, would compete with All's (Lever) cold water version. The chances are that when P&G comes up with a cold water detergent it will promote it under a new brand name, instead of harnessing the new detergent to an estab lished brand, like Tide, for instance. Anyway, that's been the company's way in branding significantly different product spin-offs. However, it did make an exception of its shortening fluid. It couldn't make up its mind whether to name that fluid Puritan or Crisco, but a market test convinced it to use the same name for the fluid as the plastic shortening. 'Mr. Mayor' spinning off suit? The world of Captain Kangaroo may be involved in internal litigation. Mitchell Hammilburg, co-partner with Bob Keeshan in the Captain Kangaroo property, is reported on the verge of filing a $10 million suit naming CBS-TV as well as Keeshan. The action stems from the circumstance, allegedly, of Keeshan going entirely on his own when he set up Mr. Mayor for the network's Saturday schedule. Hammilburg's purported claim: the Saturday event is just an offshoot of Kangaroo and he should have been declared in for a share. Mr. Mayor's revenue from programing alone is worth something like $500,000 a year. Tv booms with trade groups Deemed by advertising sages as a mark of qualitative recognition is the use made of a medium for institutional purposes. Chalk up tv as loaded at the moment with kudos of that sort. There are 1 0 trade associations with active budgets in the medium. It's a record tally for a single quarter. Following is a roster of these accounts and what section of tv they're in: GROUP SECTION American Dairy Assn. Network American Gas Assn. Network American Iron & Steel Institute Spot Brazilian Coffee Growers Spot Glass Containers Manufacturers Inst. Spot Institute of Life Insurance Network National Cotton Council Network Nat. Fed. of Coffee Growers of Colombia Spot N.Y. & New England Apple Institute Spot Savings & Loan Foundation Network Note: It's not uncommon for members of a trade association to complement an association's spot activity with local campaigns of their own on 24 SPONSOR