Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1958)

ADVERTISERS & AGENCIES CONTINUED pany translates advertising plans into "concrete advertising effort." Dartmouth's Prof. Albert W. Frey will relate findings in his study to such topics as advertising agency practices in purchasing materials and services and the extent to which advertisers use collateral services and methods of compensating agencies for specific services. Sessions are closed. Mohr & EicofF Open in Chicago, Get Grant, Tabutrex Accounts The Grant. Co.. which describes itself as the "largest tv mail order firm in the U. S.," has appointed Mohr & Eicofi. newly-formed Chicago agency, to handle its $2.5 million account. Grant manufactures automatic vegetable shredders, exercise aids, glass knives, vegetable and fruit choppers, automobile polish and various other products. The account formerly was handled by Arthur Meyerhoff & Co. Of the estimated $2.5 million advertising budget, about $1.8 million will be allocated to tv (bulk in spot), $200,000 to radio and the remainder to print media. Mohr & Eicoff also has been appointed to handle the $180,000 Tabutrex (insect repellent) account of Glenn Chemical Co., for which radio-tv is planned. DDB Adds B&H Cigarettes Doyle Dane Bernbach, New York, last week came up with the premium-priced Benson & Hedges cigarette business, a new $400,000 account. Move will help DDB to recoup the $3 million in billing it will lose July 1 — the cut-off date of the Max Factor & Co. account [Advertisers & Agencies, March 31]. Acquisition of Benson & Hedges — part of the Philip Morris Inc. "tobacco family" — is the first of "several steps" DDB is taking to regain its momentarily-lost $20 million billing position. B&H leaves Benton & Bowles, New York, effective immediately but that agency will keep a PM brand, Parliament, far heavier in billing than the lost account, in order to "concentrate its creative advertising abilities, techniques and energies" on that brand alone, according to PM Advertising Vice President Roger Greene. Line Forming for NCAA Slate Several advertisers have placed orders with NBC-TV for NCAA national and regional football tv next fall, with four cosponsors expected to be announced in the next fortnight. Among advertisers known to be interested in quarter sponsorship of national and or regional coverage are Sunbeam Corp. and Zenith (holdovers from last year), Motorola Inc., Bristol-Myers and Libby-Owens, it was understood. Sunbeam has placed an order for the national schedule, plus three regional areas (Eastern, Big Ten and Pacific Coast) for which it picked up a quarter of the tv tab in 1957. Agencies are Perrin-Paus for Sunbeam and Foote, Cone & Belding for Zenith's radio-tv division. NBC-TV has both national and regional (split network) rights. Ronzoni's three-city live commercials add flexibility to syndicated selling A regional advertiser whose food product is sold best through demonstration is proving it is practical to feed a syndicated film tv program on a "network basis" to three different eastern markets and use live commercials. The result: flexibility, "Madison Avenue" production, impact of immediacy and increased store traffic. Since Sept. 24, Ronzoni Macaroni Co., Long Island City, N. Y., has been sponsoring CBS-TV Film Sales' The Honey mooners on a 52-week basis (26 major and 26 minor positions), sharing the tab with Clairol Inc. (hair preparations), New York. The station lineup for the Jackie Gleason re-run strip involves WRCA-TV New York, WRCVTV Philadelphia and WNHC-TV New Haven — the last a Triangle station affiliated with ABC-TV, the first two both NBC owned-and-operated. The series is fed out of New York at 7-7:30 p.m. Tuesdays and seen in that timeslot in all three markets. Milton Guttenplan, vice president of Emil Mogul Co. and Ronzoni account supervisor explains, "our objective was and is live commercials. It is impossible to air live commercials simultaneously in three markets without expensive production staffs and close agency supervision. We are not so much concerned with saving money as we are with the quality of the client's 'look'." Last summer before Mogul purchased the series, Mr. Guttenplan, account executive Andre Luotto and agency tv-radio vice president Leslie L. Dunier met with client Emanuel Ronzoni Jr., vice president and WNHC-TV NEW HAVEN WRCA-TV NEW YORK WRCV-TV PHILADELPHIA The commercial relay . . . general manager of Ronzoni, to propose a "bold, new" concept in syndicated program sponsorship. In essence, they proposed that since Ronzoni's (or any spaghetti product, for that matter) chief attraction was its fine adaptability to any meal, the commercials should be done live since only live tv could Page 44 April 14, 1958 afford both client and agency a means whereby hundreds of different recipes could be shown. Furthermore, filmed commercials — especially for food products — have a way of wearing themselves thin the tenth time around, the agency felt. Mr. Ronzoni agreed. The company found time availabilities on both WRCA-TV and WRCV-TV. The most logical third connection would have been the NBC o&o WNBC (TV) New Britain, but Mr. Ronzoni was more interested in New Haven which has a larger segment of Italian background consumers than New Britain. Only there was no NBC-TV affiliate in New Haven. After long deliberation among the agency, the client and NBC-TV, it was agreed to link Philadelphia and New York on the network trunk line (there being no network programs scheduled at that time) and to connect New Haven and WNHC-TV via microwave relay. The agency leases a special telephone line from New York to New Haven to carry the audio, bounces the video through the air to a relay station just outside of New Haven where the picture is synchronized with the sound, then beamed to the WNHC transmitter. (Clairol, which sponsors The Honeymooners in about 20 markets, of which the New York-New Haven-Philadelphia circuit represents just a fragment, goes "all film" on the series and relies on the tried-and-true method of syndication, i.e., three films in three markets with commercials inserted by the station itself. Ronzoni, during the "Clairol-on" weeks, also uses filmed announcements on a similar basis.) While a three-station network is not revolutionary, the fact that Ronzoni uses such a system for a syndicated property — being willing to pay for line charges and microwave relays when it could easily do without such excess charges — is a novel approach to tv advertising. It does not save money on the arrangement, notes a Mogul executive. "However," he says, "were we to figure it purely hypothetically on a principle of cutting 26 different filmed commercials then I'd say, yes, we are cutting costs by 80%." Mr. Guttenplan enlarges upon this point: "What we wanted — and got — was a way whereby we could air a live commercial from a single point of origin in the most efficient and economical manner. Obviously, this meant airing the whole program from one source. The viewer quickly appreciates a live commercial over a filmed one. Furthermore, living tv gives our product freshness, a newsy flavor and a sense of urgency." To impart all three qualities, Ronzoni's agency retained the services of Arlyne Grey, the company's "spokeswoman" for the past eight years. The commercial receives a full week's rehearsal. During that week, new recipes are tested, camera angles are determined and there is a full dress rehearsal before air time. For Ronzoni and Mogul, there's more to selling spaghetti than dumping a lot of noodles into hot water. Broadcasting