Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1962)

Admen must sprint to overtake public so CRICHTON TELLS AFA-AAW IN TALK DOUSING INDUSTRY NARCISSISM Advertising must be better than it is today to perform successfully in the years ahead, John Crichton, new president of the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies, said Tuesday (June 26) at the joint convention of the Advertising Federation of America and the Advertising Assn. of the West in Denver. How advertising can achieve this improvement was treated by other speakers at the four-day meeting, the first joint AFA-AAW get-together in 30 years. To achieve a united front for action on education, legislation and public relations, the members of AFA and AAW overwhelmingly adopted resolutions to establish a joint commission to work out procedures toward that end. The election of Mac Martin and Donald W. Davis to the Advertising Hall of Fame honoring deceased advertising pioneers was announced. Mr. Martin, who owned and operated an agency in Minneapolis, crusaded for truth in advertising and helped found the Better Business Bureau of Minneapolis. Mr. Davis followed 17 years as a newspaper advertising salesman with 37 more as professor of advertising at Pennsylvania State U., where he built enrollment in advertising to the largest of any school in the country. AFA public service awards were presented to two living advertising leaders: John C. Cornelius, former executive vice president in charge of western operations for BBDO in Minneapolis, and Don Belding, former board chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding, Los Angeles. More Skepticism ■ Noting the increasing levels of education among the public Mr. Crichton said the available evidence suggests that the better educated a person is, the more critical and skeptical he is about advertising. Warning his hearers not to "brush off these people as eggheads, theorists or double-domes," Mr. Crichton declared: "these are the men who hold the key jobs today and will be much more influential tomorrow. These are the men we must be prepared to meet in management, science, government, education ... we have to realize that the intelligence explosion and the deliberate cultivation of the intellect have produced a new public. We must prepare ourselves and our products to meet it." Advertising should make better use of the nation's colleges and universities, both as "think factories" to work on the problems of advertising and as a way to speed advertising's progress from a trade to a profession, T.S. Repplier, president of The Advertising Council, advised the Tuesday session. "The young lawyer can be illogical, the young doctor can have no humanity and few will be the wiser. But if the young copywriter is a jerk and has a jerk for a client, 10 million people will soon know it and will once again laugh scornfully at advertising. Only when the professional calibre of as many as 95% of those in advertising is high will our faces cease turning red." Government Front ■ A proposal that advertising stop fighting government and launch a campaign to get government to use advertising instead of attacking it was advanced Tuesday morning by Thomas B. Adams, president of the Campbell-Ewald Co., Detroit. To deal with the problems of adver Agencyman Adams Let's teach the government tising on an international scale and advertising that will be effective with the better educated, more sophisticated consumer at home, the industry is going to need all the help it can get, Mr. Adams commented. The job of attracting the very finest creative brains to advertising is likely to become more and more difficult, David Bascom, board chairman of Guild, Bascom & Bonfigli, told the Tuesday morning assembly. Advertising's major appeal to the creative person, he said, is that "advertising probably calls for more versatility than the other major areas of creativity . . . But the advantages are countered by reasons why advertising does not attract today's outstanding creative minds. "It offers the least opportunity for personal glorification. The creative person who becomes an author, an artist, a composer or a dramatist has his name on public view at all times. Even the assistant costume designer for the thirdrate television shows is listed in the rollup credits at the end, even though no one reads them. Advertising is the one creative area where the creator must forever remain anonymous. . . . New Yardsticks? ■ Rising costs, increased competition and lowered profit margins are forcing a re-evaluation of some traditional advertising yardsticks. Max Banzhaff, director of advertising, Armstrong Cork Co., told the Monday morning meeting. "In the lush days of the early postwar period," he stated, "reach and frequency were all important, as the theories of power marketing were applied with enthusiasm and vigor. The formula for success was to spend enough to capture the market and sales and profits would surely follow. . . . Those days appear to be over. Dollars are too difficult to come by to take long gambles in the market place. The public no longer responds ... to the sheer weight of advertising alone. "The much publicized rise in consumer sophistication should adequately explain why reach and frequency must give ground to impact in a re-evaluation of advertising yardsticks. I do not mean that reach and frequency are unimportant. I do mean that they must receive less consideration as impact rises in importance. ... by impact I don"t mean multi-pages, gatefolds. spectaculars or other gimmicks. . . . ". . . It is far better to appeal strongly to those who are really interested in a product than to offer a watered down appeal that tries to reach everyone. That's what I mean by impact. . . ." Real World-Ad World ■ The contrast between the world of real people experiencing real emotions and advertising's incredible world of make-believe was dramatically emphasized in a sound film presented Tuesday by Don Tennant, vice president in charge of the tv commercial department of Leo Burnett Co. "In this best of all possible worlds we have created," the voice declared, "every man is heroic, or so it seems," as the screen showed handsome male models and then a bevy of beautiful women as the announcer continued: "We have created a world of beauty in abundance and if you have nothing much to say, at least have a pretty girl say it. Even the children are wellmannered and seem to stay awfully clean" fand they were seen just that way). People were shown using products happily. . . . But in the world we're 28 (BROADCAST ADVERTISING) BROADCASTING, July 2, 1962