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Tv commercials for Bic pens are designed to be highly dramatic. Pictured are frames from "fire and ice" commercial. Champion figure skater, Aja Zanova, scrapes pen point on ice, puts it in fire, then writes with it.
Bic's tv-led 5-year
Pen company's sales program is tied closely to selling via tv, as well as distribution conforming to tv signal areas. Result: a half -decade of profitable sales on target, on time.
■ With the backing of spot tv exclusively, Waterman-Bic is selling three million ball point pens in the United States every week. Once more, with the upcoming use of network tv, the company expects sales to increase 50 percent next year.
Bic's success did not come by chance. The company's marketing and media strategy has been planned and executed with militarylike precision.
In 1958, the very first year Bic entered the U.S. market by buying out Waterman Pen, the company chose an agency — Ted Bates —
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and an advertising medium — television. When tv was selected as the one and only medium, the newly formed Waterman-Bic company and its agency decided to make distribution conform to tv coverage areas rather than geographic areas. It was one of the first companies to recognize the advantages of marketing by tv coverage area. Salesmen were assigned to the total area reached by a tv station's signal, regardless of state boundaries.
A plan was devised to divide the country into five regional areas and enter one region a year. Each region was to be heavily saturated
with tv spots (sometimes up to 150 rating points in one market each week). After successful tv testmarketing in Connecticut, the company set forth on a five-phase, fiveyear plan. Each phase represents the entry into a new region. The multi-phase program has proceeded like clockwork.
Phase 1 — Introduction in the Northeast in the spring of 1961. (Currently Bic holds 48 percent of all over-the-counter ball point pen sales in this region.)
Phase 2 — Introduction in the Southeast in the fall of 1962. (Share of market is now 38 percent.)
Phase 3 — Introduction in the Midwest in the spring of 1963. (Share of market is now 33 percent.)
Phase 4 — Introduction in the Southwest and Plains States in the spring of 1964. (Share of market is now 22 percent.)
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