Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1961)

The curse of sterotyped marketing URGENCY FOR NEW TECHNIQUES DISCUSSED AT AMA CONFERENCE The need for fresh thinking in creating new products, marketing, advertising and selling was repeatedly emphasized last week at the American Marketing Assn.'s 44th conference. The gamut of the three-day session in Los Angeles ranged from the international problem of overseas competition and how to best solve it, to the domestic topics such as proper techniques for advertising to the U.S. farmer. Nearly 1,000 delegates attended the conference. Chris J. Witting, vice president for the consumer products group of Westinghouse Electric Corp., told the marketing executives that to market effectively the goods American industry is expected to produce in the years ahead they will have to break with the traditional way of doing things. As Monday's keynote speaker to the official conference theme — Effective Marketing Coordination — Mr. Witting began by declaring that "yesterday's effective marketing is as out of date as yesterday's gas jet — and so are yesterday's effective marketers." Reminding that West Germany, Japan, Italy, England and other free countries, "wastelands 15 years ago," are now "economic competitors, not only in their own homes, but in ours," Mr. Witting drove home his moral: "If we don't learn how to market hard goods competitively in the world market, we will ultimately lose our own markets at home." Mr. Witting pointed out that "not AMA President William O'Dell (center), of Facts Inc., and keynote speaker Chris J. Witting, of Westinghouse Electric Corp., listen to a news report from so long ago, our industrial technology and complementary inventive genius allowed us to set the prices of our products abroad. Today . . . West Germany and Japan, with 87% of their machinery postwar while 80% of that in the U.S. is pre-1946, can "out-produce us at lower costs per unit, even without considering the disparity in labor rates." Much to Sell ■ With an $800 billion economy predicted for 1970, we can anticipate a logjam in new products, Bell & Howell President Peter G. Peterson told the AMA Tuesday luncheon session. And, he said, there's another prediction that 1970 "will find us with as much as $25 billion worth of advertising [which] the consumer will be expected to assimilate . . . with the same single pair of ears and eyes that he now has. With this volume of advertising, the greatest threat for a product could easily be not being heard at all." Part of the answer, Mr. Peterson suggested, can come from "fresh thinking on how to sell selective or segmented markets [for] as the total market grows bigger, it obviously becomes ecnomically feasible to tailor products and selling strategies to very small and as yet unsatisfied segments of the market. . . ." "With the communication logjam that we can easily see developing in the 60's, the advertising area is one where segmented selling will probably be peculiarly appropriate. More than ever in the 60's one of the tragic errors will ft I Bill McMillen, news director of KRLA Pasadena-Los Angeles. The digests were presented before each of the three luncheon sessions. be to confuse exposure with impact." Citing Bell & Howell"s experience. Mr. Peterson said: "We decided a few years ago that it was a mistake with our limited budget to attempt to outentertain or out-reach a competitor with much larger advertising resources. Rather, we decided to put all of our budget into controversial public-service shows. We hoped that by making a deep impact on one segment of our market our sales would be higher than if we were to 'reach' a much larger segment of the market. Apparently it has worked out that way, since our share of market is at an all-time high." A Free Hand Needed ■ Marketing has an increasingly important role to play in maintaining our American way of life, James Cook, vice president for public relations at AT&T, told the AMA Wednesday luncheon session. "We're living in an era in which some have concluded that to a large degree the American people really aren't too sure what's good for them," he said. "In other words, more bluntly, they say Americans are no longer competent to make their own decisions in a free market. "Therefore, they say, it is the duty of the central government to play an everincreasing role in supervising the distribution of goods and services. They advocate continued competition — but not too much. 'Reasonable competition' is what they call it, whatever that means. . . . "What this means," Mr. Cook concluded, "is that marketing, in addition to overcoming its internal problems, must constantly demonstrate to the nation and the world at large that it plays a vital role in our free society and, indeed, that a free market is one of the principal elements of that society." Government vs. Business ■ Government and business, represented respectively by Federal Trade Commissioner Philip Elman and Charles R. Sligh Jr., executive vice president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, on Tuesday afternoon battled out oratorically the amount of regulation business should have and can stand As expected, there was little agreement between the two. Mr. Elman, citing the necessity for the "rule of law" in all phases of our national life, stated that "for the foreseeable future, at least, big government, like big business and big labor, is a fact of modern life. Government regulation in the public interest," he stated, "will not disappear from this land no matter how often it is decried as 'socialism.' " Mr. Sligh. definitely one of those who 46 (BROADCAST ADVERTISING) BROADCASTING, June 26, 1961