U. S. Radio (Jan-Dec 1961)

Radio Brings Home Trie Rice H When Carolina Rice met ra§p dio, it was love with the first ft flight. Today, alter 13 years of going steady, River Brand Rice Mills, Inc., and its agency, Donahue 8c Coe, Inc., know that Carolina Rice and radio are a combination that continues to have lots of sales appeal. It all began in 1948. The River Brand Company's sales for that year were $18 million. The company states its sale for 1960 were over $31 million. "The prime reason for Carolina's sales success has been the consistent heavy use of radio over these years," says A. B. Churchill, account supervisor for Donahue & Coe. "Though we use newspapers, magazines, tele-, vision and car cards, the backbone of the campaign is radio. Our radio outlay is three times as great as all the other media expenditures combined." (It is estimated that the radio budget for 1960 is near the $500,000 "mark.) James Bergman Jr., senior vice president of River Brand Rice Mills Inc., says, "Our sales figures are far more eloquent than any praise I could give to radio. When you are distributing a low-cost, mass produced item such as our rice package, you want to sell through a low cost medium that will hit the greatest number of consumers. "No other medium can touch radio's ability repeatedly to stand out among all the impressions constant ly made upon the people, and still accomplish this feat so economically," says Mr. Bergman. Carolina Brand Extra Long Grain Rice is the most popular of the four rice packages produced by River Brand Rice Mills Inc. The other packages are River Brand White Rice, a regular grain natural white rice; River Brand Natural Brown Rice, and Aunt Caroline par-cooked rice. U. S. RADIO • January 1961 Since 1948 Carolina Brand Rice has kept its pretty sales figure with a steady diet of radio. 33