Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

the key station in MICHIGAN'S* MIGHTY MIDDLE MARKET with a 24 hour schedule and 5000 LIVELY WATTS has over twice the number of listeners than all other stations combined in (March-April, 1957— C. E. Hooper, Inc.) contact Vernard, Rintoul & McConnell, Inc. * 17 Central Michigan counties with $1,696,356,000 spendable income. OUR RESPECTS to Leonard Sarver Matthews IN Chicago's skyscraping Prudential Plaza, a hand reaching for the stars and a basket of apples in the reception room are well-known trademarks of the Leo Burnett Co. Within its spacious quarters is a tall, pleasant, perceptive young man who, it seems, never lasted very long in any given position: his potentialities were simply too promising. Ever since he scrapped a medical ambition and started reaching for the stars in the Burnett firmament, Len Matthews has been on the move, literally and figuratively. Today, at 35, as vice president in charge of media, Mr. Matthews is responsible for its media policy execution and administration in an agency that expects to bill about $80 million this year, 60% in radio-tv. Burnett's anticipated $48 million in broadcast media (about $5 million over last year) reflect the shrewd media judgment of Mr. Matthews and other top executives around him. Radio-tv network programs and spot participations are liberally dotted with the products of such blue chip Burnett accounts as All-State Insurance, Campbell Soup, Hoover, Kellogg, Pfizer Co., Philip Morris, Pillsbury, Procter & Gamble, Pure Oil, Bauer & Black, Blue Jay, Green Giant, and The Tea Council (all network tv or radio and/ or spot advertisers), plus many others. Leonard Sarver Matthews, who deftly manages to emerge as a champion of both broadcast and print media, claims Glendean, Ky., as his birthplace (Jan. 6, 1922), Owensboro and Louisville as early residences, and later, northern Indiana. Young Len's early ambition was to be a surgeon, though he was active in track, debating and public speaking. He emerged with a scholarship, taking pre-med at the U. of Indiana 1940-42. During the war he served in the Coast Guard, received a commission and was executive officer on an LCI landing craft in the South Pacific. Abandoning his medical hopes after the war, young Mr. Matthews enrolled in business administration at Northwestern U. in June 1946 and crammed three years of college credits into two regular and two summer sessions, receiving a double major in marketing and advertising. He also managed to work at A. C. Nielsen Co. "about halftime," all designed to get some marketing experience. At Nielsen he worked on the Radio Index. He graduated second in his class (June 1948) with a bachelor of science and business administration degree. Burnett's potential as a rising agency ($12 million then to roughly $78 million last year, ranking about seventh in broadcast and tv-only billings) caught his fancy and he started in as a market research analyst. From then on he rarely stayed in the same position more than a year. The chronology: June 1949, spacebuyer; June 1950, timebuyer; 1951, head timebuyer; 1952, account executive on Pure Oil; 1953, account executive on Prom home permanent; 1954, account executive on Toni's Viv lipstick; 1955, account supervisor on Prom, Viv and other Toni products, and finally December 1955, media vice president. AT Burnett, media supervisors develop media plans based on market and media research and copy strategy; the plans are reviewed by a group of three — Mr. Matthews; Tom Wright, manager of media department, and Dr. Seymour Banks, media planning and research manager. The Burnett agency has sometimes been accused of being top-heavy in tv and ignoring radio, particularly spot. Says Mr. Matthews: "We've found spot radio difficult to sell some clients in the last few years, because of uncertain rate structures. The panic era in radio undermined confidence in the medium. We knew radio was an excellent medium, but it was undersold." There's more radio spot now, he points out, citing heavy activity for The Tea Council, Marlboro, and Campbell Soup Co.'s Franco-American products. Mr. Matthews evinces many an agency executive's concern over increasing network tv costs and double-triple spotting practices. He feels the hypothetical client with a $2.5 million budget should have some money left after investing in a network property. Some clients also decry the firm 52-week contract, he says. Among more notable accomplishments at Burnett under Mr. Matthews' supervision is the development of an updated relative media cost efficiency study in terms of people impressions, showing radio-tv in a favorable light [Advertisers & Agencies, Oct. 21; April 1], and work in color tv and newspapers ROP color. Another conviction of Mr. Matthews: timebuyers should be schooled to detect the weaknesses of various ratings services and shouldn't become too measurementconscious to the exclusion of qualitative factors in timebuying. Despite a rigorous travel schedule, Mr. Matthews is active in civic and community affairs. He lives with his wife (the former Dorothy Fessler), and two children, Nancy, 7, and James Scott, 1, in Winnetka, 111. WILS 0& neiVs ^\\% Page 28 • October 28, 1957 Broadcasting