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Internal agency groups, like BBD&O's (left, "Brainstormers," right, "Senior Women's Council") do a closed circuit analytical research job regularly executives and the agency radio staff. The trouble with all qualitative radio research is that it's research in a vacuum unless the creative section of the agency's radio operations uses the information de\ doped by the research department. In a number of cases agency researchers have had to spend weeks convincing show producers that their conclusions about promans are fact and not research fancy. Program research is actually fought by most producers just as years ago copy research in the black-and-white field was fought by copy writers at agencies. On a par with McCann-Erickson in their use of radio research is Kenyon & Eckhardt, which has both its own radio research operation and Kenyon Research Corporation, a separate organization which does research for K & E and its clients on general projects. Otis Allen Kenyon, founder of the K & E agency and chairman of its board, is an engineertrained advertising man and insisted from the start on researching his clients' campaigns. Kenyon Research is the outgrowth of this thinking and is to all intents and purposes the research division of K & E, the separate corporate entity being an operational matter which permits of special billing procedures and a feeling of research independence. KRC doesn't expect that other agencies will employ it but it does do some, though not very much, work for non-agency clients. Rated third by radio researchers is the Foote, Cone and Belding operation in New York under Hal Webber. Webber also set up the Chicago research division of FC&B and that's ranked with the Windy City's Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample office in its intelligent approach to radio fact finding. On the other hand the New York office of D-F-S isn't researchminded. The two agencies with top radio bill 22 ings, J. Walter Thompson and Young & Rubicam, are rated adequate in their radio research but neither is said at this time to be experimental-minded or developmental-minded. Y&R has over 100 people on its research staff and JWT has around 90. Dr. Peter Langhoff heads the Y&R operation since Dr. George Gallup resigned to concentrate on his individual projects, and Amo Johnson is number one research man at JWT. The comment is that since these agencies already have the sponsors and the programs research isn't as necessary as it is with agencies which are building their radio business. Y&R's loss of a number of accounts, however, and their (to all intents and purposes) new radio department, are expected to result in a substantial increase in research operations. They still continue to use a group analyzing device (variation of the CBS "Big Annie") which Dr. Gallup now calls the Hopkins Televote Machine, and feel that qualitative program research is part of an agency's job on programing. One of the greatest criticisms which client executives have in re advertising agency research, and this applies to all agency research, not just to the radio phase, is that it is funneled to the advertiser through the account executive rather than through the research head of the agency. Account men, state advertising managers of a number of national advertisers (18 were checked), have a natural tendency to edit out material which they feel may not reflect credit on the agency. Since very few of them are researchtrained they frequently misinterpret figures and the misinterpretations lead to unhappy conclusions. To such a degree is this true that man) great corporations, like Swift, P. & G., General Foods, set the formula for a research project and even check the samples as well as the pro cedures used by the agency. Still others obtain the raw figures from the agency and do their own evaluation of the findings. A problem that research men face consistently is the fact that major executives are proud of their crystal balls and dislike facts and figures. If agency radio producers and copy men fight research findings, top client executives have been known to fight twice as hard against research findings that disprove their favorite merchandising ideas. For instance, despite valid research conclusions that two-for-the-price-of-one sales and "penny sales" do not materially increase over-all business for a product over an extended period, key merchandising men in great drug outfits still go blithely along spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on these annual sales. A number of advertisers continue to sponsor programs that research proves are not reaching the audiences which buy the products advertised. These are just two examples of what research has to combat. Both independent and client research men admit that today some of the best research brains are employed by advertising agencies. Men and women like Marion Harper, Jr., Hans Zeisel, Herta Herzog (McCann-Erickson), Hal Webber (Foote, Cone and Belding), W. J. Main (Ruthrauff & Ryan), Larry Deckinger (Biow), Dr. Leon Arons (Weintraub), Clement W. McKay (Kenyon Research), P. Nahl (Needham, Louis & Brorby), and Sam Gill (Sherman and Marquette) have questioning minds and while they sometimes go off on a tangent, the tangent is the result of a probing intellect. Researchwise that is all to the good. Some of the biggest agencies, like N. W. Aver, have yet to establish a radio rePlease turn to page 46) SPONSOR