Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1963)

OUR RESPECTS to Leslie Combs Bruce Jr. Maximum ad budgets for aggressive sales support Les Bruce, vice president for advertising and marketing research of Purex Corp., Lakewood, Calif., represents a new school of advertising men who bear little resemblance to the grey flannel ad men of fictional fame. To Les and his cohorts advertising is not "the ad game," but an integral part of the overall business operation which should be employed in a businesslike manner to produce the best results for the company they represent. Answering a question at the 1962 meeting of Purex stockholders, Mr. Bruce said: "In our planning we strive to produce the maximum advertising and sales promotion budget for aggressive sales support within the profitability goal of our overall operations. We forecast our probable sales and the overall profit objectives of the company and then determine the maximum advertising expenditures justified by those forecasts." Producer of a long list of cleansers and toiletries. Purex stands 29th among California's industrial firms, but it is a small, though defiant, David when compared to its Goliath-sized competitors — Procter & Gamble, Lever and Colgate. This has led Purex to adopt an advertising policy of concentrating its advertising into one major medium, network television. "This permits us to simultaneously advertise all of our national brands as well as our Purex corporate theme of 'The Woman's Touch,' " Mr. Bruce told the stockholders. "It also serves to offset the sheer advertising tonnage of our competitors." The Big Look ■ The "real payoff," Mr. Bruce continued, "results from the way in which this one principal advertising medium is used. First, it must, of course, deliver effective commercial messages at an efficient cost-per-thousand. ... It must give the brand and the overall company 'the Big Look.' It must convey to our field selling organization and to retail customers across the country a feeling that Purex and its brands are identified with the best in television." A native of New York City (born June 18, 1926), Leslie Combs Bruce Jr. grew up in the East. He attended Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn., and George Washington U. in Washington, D. C, where he majored in business administration but left before getting his degree. ("I wanted to get married and I had to have a job.") He found the job — in New York with Benton & Bowles; married the girl— Sally Perkins Wilshire of Riverside, Conn., and that summer (1949) entered advertising as a trainee at E&B. Follow ing his indoctrination into agency operations, Les began his education in soap-and-detergent advertising as assistant account executive on the Tide account, working on copy, copy research, trade advertising and media for the P&G detergent. In 1953, he moved to Sherman & Marquette (no longer in existence), to work on Colgate's Ajax cleanser and Cashmere Bouquet toilet soap. Young Man Goes West ■ Not long after his move to S&M, Les met Craig Davidson, who had left a New York agency berth (at Compton Adv.) and was then head of marketing (including advertising) for Purex. Les had for some time been feeling that he'd spent enough of his life in the East and it did not take much persuading for him to accept an offer to join Purex as associate advertising manager. He subsequently became brand manager and in 1957 director of advertising. Last fall, he was elected a vice president of Purex, in charge of advertising and marketing research. When he joined Purex in 1954, the company's advertising budget was a little more than $1 million a year, spent chiefly in print, Mr. Bruce recalls. The following year, Purex acquired Dutch Cleanser, whose advertising was handled by Weiss & Geller (now Edward H. Weiss & Co.), a Chicago agency, which that fall put Purex into network television as co-sponsor (with Speidel) of The Big Surprise, a $100,000 givaway show on NBC-TV. "After a slow start it took off like a wild bird into Mr. Bruce No "grey-flannel" stereotype the top 10 and it helped make Purex a national name." Purex stayed with The Big Surprise for two seasons ("until we felt there were getting to be too many quiz shows on the air"), then became the original sponsor of Perry Mason (with LibbyOwens-Ford). "Then a year away from television convinced us that with six national or nearly national brands to advertise we needed its impact and its coverage and its effect on our own sales force and the trade as well as the public. An hour would be ideal, but we couldn't afford an hour each week. "We asked Weiss to explore the problem with NBC and we got a package of seven special dramatic programs. There was Art Carney's telephone monologue, documentaries on the SaccoVanzetti trial and Mark Twain's America; it was an off-beat group of controversial and provocative programs that NBC hadn't been able to sell so we got them at a bargain price. They got good reviews from the tv critics and, somewhat surprisingly, good ratings, too, so we really had it both ways — worthwhile programs and a good cost-per-thousand. Daytime Specials ■ "We wanted to follow these programs with something just as good and Weiss came up with the idea for a series of monthly daytime specials, something that had never been tried but the statistics indicated would work. The original idea was to take our slogan 'You'll find the Woman's Touch in every Purex product,' and make a series — 'The Woman's Touch' in — politics, sports, art, the law and so on. It didn't work out quite that way, but developed into the Purex Specials for Women — The Cold Woman, The Trapped Housewife, Change of Life and the rest, which got us the results we were after and an Emmy to boot. "Meanwhile, we continued with evening specials of one kind and another, which developed into our 'The World of . . .' series, the World of Bob Hope, Billy Graham, Jacqueline Kennedy and the others." Les and Sally Bruce live at Newport Beach with their children: Barbara, 11; Victoria, 8; David, 6, and Philip, 4. "I play a little golf and a little tennis, but my family is my real hobby and we spend a lot of time together." His job and his family leave him little time for other activities, but Les makes a contribution to his community by serving on the advertising committee of the Southern California Ail-Year Club and he is general program chairman for the West Coast meeting of the Assn. of National Advertisers, to be held in April in Santa Barbara. BROADCASTING, January 14, 1963 99