Broadcasting (Oct 1931-Dec 1932)

Three-Point Landing in Radio Advertising By HERBERT G. FOSTER Adams Broadcasting Service, Inc. Ordinary Horse Sense Necessary in Selecting Programs; Some Follow-up Steps Which Sponsors Often Forget WHAT IS TERMED a "crime" in broadcasting is described in this article drawing an analogy between airplane flights and the use of radio for advertising purposes. When a sponsor decides to publicize his product on the air, there are three fundamental factors to bear in mind if he expects results. The author of this article, an ex-flier, has had six years of radio advertising experience with a network, advertising agencies and spot broadcasting. He was one of the original commercial representatives of WEAF, New York, under the A. T. & T. I i Herbert G. Foster HAS BUSINESS or pleasure or curiosity taken you up in an airplane ? If you have ever flown, you will easily appreciate the analogy between flying and radio broadcasting. In both you must make a "good three-point landing." Other ' wise there's trouble. The lack of good business judgment or the usual advertising common sense displayed by many users of the "air" is a crime. It's a frightful waste of money and a black eye to the advertising agency or radio counsellor who permits the client to forget the A B C— the three-point landing of broadcasting. In broadcasting the three points are: 1. "The program's the thing." 2. Intelligent selection of stations and of broadcasting time. 3. The merchandising tie-in to insure getting back the full dollar plus interest from (a) sales force, (b) retail outlets, (c) listeners. All of which sounds like so many bromides, but in no medium are these three factors more true than in radio broadcasting. If you have an interesting, saleable story to tell, how shall it be told and to whom? First, you determine the plan of approach to your buying public; then you decide between black and white or colors, after which you weigh, for example, the merits of The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Liberty, or the Ladies Home Journal, the Woman's Home Companion and the Pictorial Review, or consider the National Broadcasting Company, Columbia Broadcasting System or spot broadcasting. You do not contract for space and/or broadcasting time and then call a hurried conference and open it with the prayer "My God, what shall we do"? Your program of sales approach to the public has been determined beforehand as have the copy angle and the question of colors or no colors. Choosing Talent Carefully THEN WHY not use that same advertising merchandising horse sense in figuring out carefully, without panic at the last moment, what type of radio program is the most natural link between the product sponsoring the broadcast and the logical purchasers ? To use the same radio talent regardless of what it is supposed to create good will for, is about as sensible an approach as collecting a lotT of adjectives and adverbs, comparatives and superlatives, for anything you want to write about. Be sincere. Move up the salesstreet your factory is built on. "The program's the thing," but the program must be up your special alley and then be produced and staged with — yes, perhaps — intuitive showmanship. A pencil doesn't make a copywriter, a brush an artist, nor do five years of violin or piano make a radio impresario. Use the analogy as far as you want to but use it ... if you expect a return on your radio investment. The second point in the threepoint landing on the radio field is the same cold-blooded analysis used in selecting publications. The same keen analysis should be applied to "station" values. I put the quotes around "station" because that word refers here to a local station used for actual studio broadcasts or for electrical transcriptions as well as to a "group" or to an entire network of radio stations. Do advertisers believe all of the solicitations made to them by newspapers, magazines, 24-sheet posters and broadcasting "stations"? (Don't forget the full quotes). No, on the printed media they have skilled men to weigh the pros and cons and to sift facts. Today, unfortunately, we haven't the record of field signal strength of radio stations as publications have ABC reports showing points of purchase. No network contains all the best stations; each has its share of firsts, seconds and nearseconds. And many independent stations can sit up and challenge the best of them. Is the product sold nationally, sectionally or locally? Is network or spot broadcasting the more economical as judged from a score of angles? Put down the answer to that last question in black and white for careful study. For one product, a network is the best, for another "spot." It all depends upon the retail distribution and policy of the advertiser and his ability to cash in on the third point of "merchandising tie-in to insure results from sales force, retail outlets and the listeners." I have seen advertisers fuss and fume over the selection of a baritone or over the choice between two stations in a city, and then disregard completely (despite oral and written entreaties): sending out proper notices to the sales force, or notifying the stores which sell their products, or using a line in their local newspaper advertisements or in the magazines, or running a page in their house organs to dealers and to the public. I have seen advertisers request radio letters in order to count the size of their fan mail and then not open all the mail or send even a form letter out or utilize the public response in sales promotion to their dealers or salesmen. When a man helps another to spend his and his stockholders' money, it is a sacred duty both to advise and to insist upon the correct use of all three points, be he the advertising manager of the sponsor or the advertising agency or the radio and time placement specialists. An advertising account is not lost through insistence upon the sound use of a medium. Accounts are lost by the counsellor being afraid to differ, even agreeably, with the man who spends the money. Are we all pilots or are we simply going along for a ride in somebody's radio plane? Station and Agency Clash on Program Opposite Points of View Seen In Talks to Cleveland Club BROADCASTERS and advertising agencies agree that the program is the thing, but they differ somewhat on the responsibility for forming this program according to talks made by Harry Howlett, commercial manager of WHK, Cleveland, and Frank Hubbell, of the Hubbell Advertising Agency, at a recent dinner-clinic of the Cleveland Advertising Club. Said Mr. Howlett: "Too often, when an agency enters the broadcasting field, some individual in the organization views it as an opportunity for self-expression. Immediately, in his own mind, he becomes an authority on music, art, drama and regards himself as an impresario. The station, though wiser through bitter experience, may be" forced to accept an inferior program, and the result is a black eye for radio. "The station is asked to guarantee success, to give exact coverage to tabulate the number of listeners, but it cannot do so, for the program is the thing. Buyers of time are prone to expect phenomenal rather than average results ; they want too much of radio, too quickly. "The station affords use of its facilities, it builds an organization calculated to assist the buyer of time, and it should suggest the type of program. In fact, the station must insist upon doing this, for if the radio advertiser fails the station fails." Replied Mr. Hubbell: "We look at radio as we do at the publishers — to furnish the medium to take the advertiser's story to the public. Hence the station should not be expected to write continuity or even determine the type of program any more than the publisher should furnish the layout and copy. "Properly or not, the station representative is interested only in selling time, without considering whether broadcasting fits into the advertiser's plans or not or whether the amount of expenditure is equitable * * * The radio station is interested in selling all open time. The agency is interested in selling only the time that will do the advertiser the most good." February 15, 1932 • BROADCASTING Page 9