Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

ADVERTISERS t AGENCIES CITROID LOOSES RADIO 'WAVE' • Dowd, Redfield & Johnstone places spot schedule for cold remedy • Maker, Grove Labs, discards old technique for one-two punch in spot The "cold season" officially gets underway today (Monday) at Dowd, Redfield & Johnstone, New York. This is the day Citroid — a citrus bioflavonoid compound manufactured by Grove Labs, St. Louis — pulls the wrap off its "revolutionary" radio spot "wave technique" campaign [Advertisers & Agencies, Aug. 12]. The drive, which will use 30% of Citroid's 1957-58 budget of $2 million (enlarged 35% over last year), will blanket 40 markets via 115 stations and, DR&J hopes, cover 80% of the U. S. population. According to DR&J's vice president and account supervisor, Gene McMasters, the current spot campaign (100% in radio) will be "saturation-saturation." By this he means that as against the average saturation drive of 60 announcements a week over any given station, the Citroid "imprint" will be heard as many as 95 times weekly. The agency will be able to accomplish this doubling-up of announcements by doing away with the traditional cold season purchase of 13-26 week schedules. "We have bought three separate cycles with intervals in between," he explains. Thus, instead of "spreading the client thin over a large period of time," DR&J intends to "make impact where it can be heard." Citroid seeks "the element of dominance." It knows that dollar for dollar, it can't beat out its No. 1 competitor, Anahist, which this year will spend 85% of its $6 million ad budget in broadcast media [At Deadline, Aug. 19]. "We have conceded television to Anahist," notes Mr. McMasters, "but we'll give them a run for their radio money. ... If you can't dominate with money, you do it some other way." DR&J's "way": Instead of being content with "100% coverage," that is, covering each radio home at least once a week, Citroid is "seeking 250% coverage." Each market will have numerous stations "overlapping," so there will be a Citroid message around-the-clock. DR&J will concentrate on daytime radio, using — whenever suitable — local weathercasters and transcriptions featuring such "accepted radio authorities and familiar voices" as Milton Cross and George Hamilton Combs. Citroid "discovered" radio in an ironic way. Mr. McMasters recalls that "when we first approached the retail druggists and asked them to take on Citroid, their first question was, 'will it be on tv?' We had no choice." So Citroid last year allocated $500,000 to tv spot, used radio in only three markets — Grand Rapids, Miami and Minneapolis. Miami was an "excellent cold market" because of the tourist trade from the North. Minneapolis was originally intended to be used for only newspapers and tv spot, but the medical advisory board to the Star and the Tribune would not "clear" the Citroid print campaigns (in the heat of the Citroid v. Anahist advertising-public relations imbroglio that stemmed from the American Medical Assn. Journal's contention that bioflavonoids were ineffective). Citroid "tried" radio as an experiment. The results were devastating, Mr. McMasters reported. Whereas with television "nothing really happened," Citroid now began to "move — and move fast." The agency wasted little time, pulled all of its tv allocation out of the Minneapolis market and gave it to radio, he recalled. The agency cites the growth of the account from $500,000 billing in 1955 to $2 million two years later as testimony to its good use of drug and cosmetics clients. Though in the "long pull" its billing breakdown by media will show tv claiming a bigger share than radio, this is explained by DR&J's Executive Vice President Edmund F. Johnstone with one word, "Revlon." That account alone bills $3.5 million, with 75% of this billing going into broadcast media, 90% of this into network tv, 10% into spot. Revlon may be the biggest broadcast user in DR&J's shop, but the agency shows considerable pride in the work it has done for "the little accounts." Among them: • Charles Pfizer & Co., Brooklyn, N. Y. This client had rarely — if ever — used consumer media, concentrating on the ethical drug field through medical trade journals. Last year Pfizer introduced a new medi Advertisement Page 60 • October 21, 1957 cated throat lozenge called Candettes to the consumer after having already achieved national distribution through trade media. It allocated $500,000 to the consumer push. DR&J felt these funds were insufficient to support the national distribution, but the client refused to increase the total. Using print media as "an establisher," the agency next selected the top 15-20 U. S. markets in drug sales and spent 80% of the balance in spot announcements on radio and tv. Again relying on daytime saturation, DR&J pushed Candettes so hard that its leading rival lost its toehold as the No. 1 medicated lozenge, the agency claims. Suffice it to say, Pfizer for the current cold season has upped Candettes' budget 30%. For Pfizer's new Bonadettes, a motion sickness pill, DR&J's research department prescribed radio. Reason: While users of motion sickness remedies are in the distinct minority, most are to be found among weekend auto travelers, families with children. The only problem facing the agency was that Pfizer's name — its pioneering work on penicillin and aureomycin — was such that "sensationalism" or hard-sell would not be "serving the client's best interests." Thus, DR&J came up with a transcribed youngster named "Tommy Traveler," a 10-year-old genius whose only problem is that he is prone to motion sickness. The agency "sent" Tommy — on transcriptions — to Great Britain via a steamship liner, across the Sahara on camelback, into space on a rocket. Wherever Tommy went, along went Bonadettes. Roughly $250,000 was allocated last summer to Bonadettes, all to radio, and the 20-25 market area was blanketed for 14 weeks by spot announcements late in the week in order "to catch the weekend crowd." • Rapidol Distributing Co., New Hyde Park, N. Y. In 1951, when Rapidol introduced a new hair color shampoo named Blensol, the agency was asked to work with a $5,000 budget. Today, billing approaches $500,000. The avenue used to increase the billing: television. With some 19 shades to pick from, average druggists would not and could not be bothered with stocking the entire Blensol line. This set up what the agency describes as "a fundamental marketing problem." The solution was to persuade leading drug chains, such as Detroit's Cunningham group, to stock Blensol, then use local tv spots to move potential Blensol consumers into the chain's stores. The next logical step, figured DR&J, was for the consumer, once she had bought Blensol at, say, Cunningham's, to go to her local drug store and demand the shampoo. The result was obvious: the local drug stores were forced to take on Blensol. Now in 60 markets, Blensol has achieved 75% national distribution and uses 12-15 spots a week. What about the 10% Revlon has allocated to spot broadcasting? Where does it go and for what? The agency's current principal spot user in the Revlon line is Sunbath, introduced in "the summer" of this year in Miami (actually February-March) and run throughout June-July-August in 27 major markets other than in Florida. Dowd, Redfield & Johnstone first "broke" Sunbath in Miami via a specially-filmed "cut-in" on Broadcasting