Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

Record Details:

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"It's not the number of things you say, but the way you say them that counts," he declares, noting also, however, that it takes "a really good commercial two minutes to tell its story." In this vein of commercial sell, Bergmann, who recently returned from Europe, reports that France is preparing to initiate commercial tv using one-minute commercials. Gallic video will adopt the Italian approach, requiring each commercial to present 40 seconds of entertainment and allowing only 20 seconds of sell at the end. The Italians have found, and the French agree, that this is the best way "not to irritate people," he says. This European approach is obviously concerned not only with the time allowed for sell, but also with the way in which the sell is delivered. Many critics of American commercial television practices may be adherents of the same philosophy, but now that the heat has subsided in the pro-and-con arguments over the integrated vs. the piggyback commercial, there seems to be a below-the-surface current that tugs the advertiser toward finding the best sell without becoming responsible in part for the most criticised area of tv. The Alberto-Culver experiment seems to regard the answer to the problem as reducing the "appearance" of clutter, or, rather than the number of items wed, to take care about how they are wedded. But Polk, A-C's ad manager, who agrees with those believing that mutuality of products is important for multiple product messages, may be keeping an inner eye out for the problems yet to beset A-C's plans to integrate non-hair items in twoor -more -product announcements. "All of Alberto-Culver's products can live together," he stresses. "We will continue to use piggybacks, especially for our more lightly advertised products," Polk continues. "Integrated formats will be tried for frequently advertised, large-spending big brands." And so this represents a new high in integration as well as a change of direction for one advertiser who most strongly resisted the switch to integration. But. Polk insists, it is not a change in over-all advertising philosophy. With Alberto-Culver continuing to launch new products like Rinse Away Dandruff Shampoo via massive tv campaigns, the company and its three agencies will have a full complement of product combinations to experiment with in quest of the "right" formats. The new parade of commercials coming from Alberto-Culver — one of the nation's top ten tv advertisers with, according to TvB, $30.4 million in the medium in 1963 — will be watched with as keen an interest by the industry as is likely to be provoked in the public. Where it will lead AlbertoCulver is anyone's guess at this time. "Frankly," Polk admits, "even we don't know." ♦ November 23, 1964 31