Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

ment, and one with belittling competitors' products. Mr. Cox said: "I believe the committee has played a significant part in reducing still further the very small percentage of advertising which is offensive to the public and gives ammunition to our critics. I want to make it clear, though, that AAAA doesn't police its members or anybody else. Whatever we have been able to accomplish has been through information and persuasion alone." The Committee also seeks in positive ways to raise the character of advertising, Mr. Cox said. This is done primarily by helping to arrange for inspirational talks by creative agency leaders at AAAA meetings throughout the country, he added. Other committee members attending the meeting were: Robert E. Allen, Fuller & Smith & Ross; Beatrice Adams; Gardner Adv.; Samuel Dalsimer, Grey Adv.; Frederic R. Gamble, AAAA; Jerome B. Gray, Gray & Rogers; Arno H. Johnson, J. Walter Thompson; Ralf Kircher, Kircher, Helton & Collett; Robert R. Newell, Cunningham & Walsh; DeWitt O'Kieffe, Leo Burnett Co.; Henry O. Pattison Jr., Benton & Bowles; E. A. Schrimer, Campbell-Ewald Co., and Hal Stebbins, Hal Stebbins Inc. Timex Drops Hope Show After 'Sinatra' Mixup The U. S. Time Corp. (Timex watches) last week canceled its contract to sponsor or co-sponsor five hour-long shows starring Bob Hope after Mr. Hope appeared on an ABC-TV program alternately sponsored by a rival, Bulova. Two days after Mr. Hope appeared on the Oct. 18 premiere of the Frank Sinatra Show (see page 15), Timex notified NBCTV it had cancelled its contract. Affected are two remaining 1957 hour-long Hope shows and three 1958 programs on which Timex would have shared sponsorship with Johnson Motors Div., Outboard Marine & Mfg. Co., Waukegan, 111. Timex' agency, Peck Adv., later confirmed the client's wishes with a "letter of cancellation." The Sinatra show is sponsored on alternate weeks by Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. and Bulova Watch Co., both through McCann-Erickson, New York. Timex alleged Mr. Hope violated his NBC contract by appearing on a rival network, ABC-TV, for a competing manufacturer. Mr. Hope claimed, however, that at the time he committed himself to appear on the Sinatra show he didn't know Bulova was the alternate sponsor, and when he did learn, he already was scheduled to appear on the Oct. 18 opener, sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes. Both NBC-TV and McCann-Erickson attempted to clear the way for Mr. Hope's scheduled appearance by arranging for the Bulova "cross-plug" on the Liggett & Myerssponsored hour to appear after the closing credits, reasoning that no Timex plug would be needed to offset the Bulova spot. The Bulova spot, however, appeared before the closing credits and furthermore was no mere "cross-plug" but a regular commercial aired on the basis of an alternate sponsor's billboarding privilege. Timex already had sponsored one full Bob Hope NBC-TV show Oct. 6. Timex originally signed as sole sponsor for the Hope programs, but found Johnson Motors was the alternate sponsor for 1958. An official at Peck said Thursday that his client had been willing to share the Dec. 7 show with a co-sponsor. But as of last week, NBCTV had not found another advertiser for that program. NBC was in a dilemma at midday Thursday in attempting to stave, off cancellation of both Hope shows — Nov. 7 and Dec. 7 — because of lack of sponsorship (estimated M-E Opens Workshop For Marketing Study Opening of a new Marketing Communications Workshop by McCann-Erickson at its home office in New York was announced last week by Marion Harper Jr., president of the agency. He said the workshop, occupying the 10,000-sq.-ft. 30th floor of the home office, will conduct three parallel, year-round programs: (1) an organized schedule of studyprojects in which McCann-Erickson executives will explore both new and established areas of marketing communications; (2) lecture and discussion programs for the staffs of all divisions and departments of McCannErickson and its affiliates both in the U.S. and abroad, and (3) indoctrination courses for new employes. Mr. Harper explained that the workshop is a major extension of the company's on the-job training program and its continuing clinic of agency operations. "We are in a business of innovation," he noted. "To be good at it, we should keep alive a trainee's ambition to learn — and remain trainees until we retire." President Harper himself started at McCann-Erickson as a trainee, its third, in 1938. Among more than a dozen projects currently under way at the workshop is an examination of "By what standards should an agency's services to an advertiser be evaluated?" which is being studied by a group headed by Frank K. White, senior vice president and treasurer, and former broadcasting network executive. Another project group, headed by C. Terence Clyne, vice president, plans review board chairman and management supervisor of all tv-radio programming, seeks to answer the question, "To what extent will television's role in marketing change, and how will tv be used af fordably and efficiently for packaged goods, industrial and durable goods?" Albert W. Sherer, McCann-Erickson vice president and a member of the board of trustees of the U. of Chicago, is director of the workshop. The staff includes Dr. Robert P. Holston, vice president of the Institute of Communications Research (a McCannErickson affiliate), who serves as communications consultant to the workshop, and G. Newton Odell, manager of training in the company's home office. Participants in the executive project groups are selected on a rotating basis. In the second program of workshop activity, some 400 executives will take part in lectures and seminars each year. In the third program, 170 new employes — those from colleges and graduate business schools as well as on-the-job trainees — currently are receiving indoctrination in the structure, procedures and philosophy of the agency. AT LEFT: Albert W . Sherer (I), workshop director, discusses schedules on the master project chart with G. Newton Odell, M-E train ing manager. AT RIGHT: In the workshop's exhibit area, a group discusses a commercial on a specially designed tv commercial projector. Broadcasting October 28, 1957 • Page 35