Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1958)

the key station in MICHIGAN'S* MIGHTY MIDDLE MARKET with a 24 hour schedule and 5000 LIVEIY WATTS r has over twice the number of listeners than all other stations combined in (March-April, 1957— C. E. Hooper, Inc.) 4 LANSING r contact Venard, Rintoul & McConnell, Inc. * 17 Central Michigan counties with $1,696,356,000 spendable income. OUR RESPECTS to Nelson Lewis Gross Television is an ideal medium for cosmetics, Nelson Gross, director of domestic advertising for Max Factor & Co., said last week. '"Not because it's a mass medium, although that's important, but because it's a personal, intimate medium. Television appeals intimately to the emotions and it stimulates the imagination; both processes are essential to the successful selling of beauty products. "But we've only begun to learn how to use tv, how to produce it. how to buy it," Mr. Gross declared. "Television calls for creative marketing as well as creative copy and art; it requires the knowledge of where and when a good idea can be most effectively delivered as well as how it can best be presented. "There's far too much buying circulation for its own sake, grabbing the top-rated program without stopping to consider its suitability to the product it's supposed to sell. No advertising man would think of using Western Family to sell Dior gowns. Yet many advertisers are doing just that in television." Matching the proper product and the right environment is nothing new to Nelson Lewis Gross. He was born in Los Angeles (on Aug. 19, 1920), so it was natural that before his fourth birthday he was working in motion pictures as a child actor (his credits include "Tom Sawyer," with Jackie Coogan, and "Skippy," with Jackie Cooper). Some years later, while an undergraduate at the U. of California at Berkeley, he saw the difficulty many fellow students had taking notes of lectures, so he hired a couple of business students to take down in shorthand all lectures given to classes of 100 or more. Transcribed, mimeographed and put on sale at a nickel apiece at the student co-op. these notes sold up to 40,000 copies a week. Mr. Gross also served as business manager of the school paper, directed the dramatic club and kept physically fit with football, track and judo. During summer vacations, he worked at Paramount as assistant cutter, assistant cameraman, film editor, and after graduation (in 1939 with a B.S. degree) he added writer, unit manager, assistant director and associate producer to his list of movie titles gained at Paramount, Universal, United Artists and RKO. He also experimented with publicity, from press agentry for movie stars to industrial public relations, before World War II put him into uniform and back into motion pictures as a producer of training and combat films. He also wrote, produced and directed an ABC radio series for Army Special Services during almost two years of his military career. Out of his lieutenant's uniform in December 1945, Mr. Gross added stage production to his film and radio experience as associate producer of "Chicken Every Sunday" and "St. Louis Woman" and as producer of "Bal Negre." After two years, dealing with artistic temperament lost its charm and he fled Broadway for the sanity of the business world, accepting the position of executive assistant to A. C. Horn, president of the Sun Chemical Co., in charge of the retail paint division. But he could not shed his past completely and he soon took an option on the old Edison Studios in the Bronx with the idea of making films for television. CBS also was interested in the project and when it was finally abandoned young Mr. Gross was invited to join the network's tv department. In 1949 he became an associate director at CBS-TV where he worked on scores of live telecasts from contests to comedy, drama to variety. Later, as network film coordinator, he selected, edited and created continuity for both network and local film programs, including the Late Show and the Late Late Show on WCBS-TV New York. In 1953, Mr. Gross left CBS to join the advertising agency world as a vice president of H. B. Humphrey, Alley & Richards, where as account supervisor, radio-tv director and chairman of the new business plans and development committee, he created and tested tv campaigns for such accounts as Wright Silver Cream, E-Z Mills, Taste-O-Sea frozen seafoods. Lea & Perrins and Breck Hair Set Mist. Three years later, he joined BBDO as account supervisor on the Revlon account. Last September he moved to McCann-Erickson as a vice president, but an offer to join Max Factor as head of domestic advertising proved irresistible and in November he left New York to take up his new duties in his native city. Nelson Gross and his wife (nee Gail W. Watkins) live in the Brentwood section where he can keep an eye on the Los Angeles campus of his alma mater and indulge in his hobbies of guns, tennis, horseback riding, boating and skin diving. His organizations include the Friars Club, National Sales Executives Club, Council of Presbyterian Men, Motion Picture Pioneers, Unit Managers Guild, Assoc. Directors Guild, Film Editors Union, Film Laboratory Technicians Union, Cameramen's Union and Radio & Television Directors Guild. wils ^ neWs Page 22 • February 17, 1958 Broadcasting