Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

ADVERTISERS S AGENCIES continued MADISON AVENUE WANTS GUIDANCE FROM ACROSS THE HUDSON Speaking last Monday before the Texas Assn. of Broadcasters in Dallas, Bryan Houston, board chairman of Bryan Houston Inc., discussed some of the common problems of broadcasters and agencies. Here is a condensed version of his talk: To begin with, what you have to sell to advertisers is nothing but a measure of your service to your community. The time has long passed when simply the ownership of the physical apparatus for broadcasting is a guarantee of success. Sure, there are still a few one-station key towns in tv but, generally speaking, in either type of broadcasting today you must do good programming with good talent or you will not get much audience to sell on Madison Avenue. Good programming and good talent may be different from city to city, but in most of the towns I visit it doesn't take long to find out who has the "hot" station. Strangely enough, there seems to be only a modest relationship between popularity in the market and station power. Of course, a 50-kw station covers more territory than a 100-w job, but within the broad area of a big station there are usually a whole mess of little stations doing all right in their own communities. Rule No. 1, then, is: Nobody on Madison Avenue can sell continuously what you haven't got. Ten dollars spent on talent is worth a hundred dollars spent in selling. Because we are in the business of intangibles, you and I must not only do a good job but we must also make it easy for our customers to realize that we are doing a good job. New York is a big town, but the people there are no smarter, and actually not much dumber, than the people any place else. While many of you may have some knowledge of other parts of the country— you notice that I did not intimate that we are not all native sons — this knowledge of other parts of the country, however gained, is mostly in the background of our daily lives. Rule No. 2: Be sure that you always keep your national reps up to date on any fresh information about your station and your community that will be helpful to them. Not less often than once a quarter this must be done. Most salesmen like to sell or they would be following any of the easier ways to make a living. It's all right to say, "'Old John really knows those New York agency boys."' The fact that Tom or Dick works hard and calls on your prospects regularly only makes it that much harder for him to do a fresh, interesting sales job on each visit. When I run into an old friend and ask why he hasn't been in to see me, he will give me the old spiel about, "I know how busy you are and I hate to bother you." Roughly translated, that means either, "I didn't think you had any business to place," or "I haven't got a single thing that would justify my taking a half hour of your time." Give that same friend a fresh idea to sell, and all his modest concern for my busy, busy day is forgotten. He'll be back at me Broadcasting MR. HOUSTON faster than sputnik can cross over Rhode Island. Rule No. 3: Every salesman will do the best job on the thing which he knows most about and which is consequently the easiest to sell. Because the impact of radio was so nearly impossible to understand 30 years ago, you developed the most complete audience survey systems that had ever been seen. They proved the point of broadcasting efficiency, but in a measure they have been a boomerang in that they have never been perfected to the point where they can distinguish between theoretical audience and sales effectiveness. Mr. Roosevelt proved that the voice is mightier than the pen. The Chinese and Jam Handy have long said that "a picture is worth a thousand words," but Mr. Roosevelt's voice was more potent with our electorate than a thousand newspapers. I know of a radio station in Texas that gets an unbelievable percentage of the total daytime audience available to a group of tv and radio stations. It isn't done with mirrors but with voices and personalities. I don't know how many of you gentlemen have ever been a lonesome housewife, but if you haven't heard, it can get pretty dull. I have heard a lot about the ill effects of some of our daily broadcast programming but, in this uneasy world, I expect that broadcasting has afforded the daily tie with friendly voices that has kept many a gal from blowing a fuse. Most of you have heard of the LIFO principle of warehouse accounting. LIFO means last in, first out. An examination of your problems on Madison Avenue indicates that too many of you have a sort of LIFO relationship with a lot of advertising schedules. Let me give you a couple of quick illustrations. An old friend of mine came charging into my office once with his head down and his elbows out. His beef was a very real one. For two years in a row his had been one of the magazines recommended by the agency which had been dropped by the client in the final makeup of its budget, while a competitor stayed on the list. What sort of a weak-kneed jellyfish was I to let a sales department direct the advertising? There was a good reason for my friend's magazine being on the list and ample reason for his being selected to come off. His competition had taken the trouble to call on every regional and most district sales managers. Because the men in the field knew the competitor's book, they had confidence in it, and because the sales department had confidence in the book, it actually did a better job. Rule No. 4: In your territory, call on every corporation sales executive you can find and, if there are none in your town, go to the nearest division offices and sell. This will not take the place of good national representatives, but it sure will make their sales efforts more productive. I have no more rules to suggest, but I do have a very earnest plea. Do what you can to simplify your price and availability information. See if there isn't something you can do to standardize the manner, method and type of information we get in response for information. When I started to check out this subject with our own media department I saw a letter dated Oct. 10, received by us on Oct. 15 confirming a program change that had occurred on Oct. 3. Another handful of papers showed availabilities, but no prices in response to our request for recommendations on a specific product. Another batch were availability and price on a number of local programs with no descriptive material whatever as to what some of the local programs were. Some of the program names were self-explanatory, some were not. There seems to be a deep-rooted belief that call letters alone are all the identification necessary. There is undoubtedly the fairly constant thought that the first written reply can be supplemented by a prompt personal call by one of your representatives. This is all to the good, except that you may be involved in putting together a spot list for 65 markets on a combination of tv and radio stations, and any quick, clear, complete information you can put into the hands of Madison Avenue media men will always help and never hurt your chances of making a sale. SOMETHING TO DO In Nevada, where gambling and the spaces are wide open, there are 145 hardy souls in the town of Beatty (pop. 487, according to the 1950 census) who apparently believe life can get pretty boring and lonely at times. They are signers of a petition protesting the latest inconvenience — the closing down by Nye County authorities of the town's two brothels, the Willow Tree and the Red Rooster. The petition, filed formally with the county commissioners, did not give a reason for the protest, but one petitioner afterward explained his indignation: "This means more to us than it would to most places. After all, we don't have television." October 28, 1957 • Page 39