Radio showmanship (Sept 1940-May 1941)

Cigar-smoking, sportsloving, civic-minded Frank John Ryan took over the reins of his Kalamazoo Laundry business from his father some 15 years ago. With the aid of smart promotions in three different media, he has since propelled the 40 year-old establishment into the No. 2 spot in the state of Michigan (second largest volume). Laundryman Ryan will go anywhere, anytime, any place, for a good sports event, has missed no major athletic happening in the past 10 years. His sole hobby: Saving the stubs of the admission ducats he has bought and used. Each is dated, carefully filed in the lower lefthand drawer of his desk, along with stubs ranging from the Dempsey-Firpo battle of '25 to the All-Star games of '30 to '40 inclusive. Sports-follower Ryan is also a member of some 11 civic organizations, on the Board of Directors of the Kalamazoo C. C3* C, treasurer of the Community Chest. In the national field, he is equally as prominent; he is president of the Miraclean Institute, a member of the board of the American Institute of Laundering, and is proud as a peacock of his personal friendship with hundreds of dry cleaners and laundrymen whom he has visited and confabbed with in many a coast-to-coast jaunt. Mr. Ryan is married, has one 14 yearold son at LaSalle Military academy (whom he's grooming for a halfback post on some major college team in '45). enough medium for the big fellow, but not much for the smaller merchant. And then in 1932 our business hit an alltime low. The years \(>2{) to 1932 had taken their toll in volume; a 70% drop left me breathless and learching for new wayi and meant of rejuvenating it. John Fetzer bad been in my office many time.; with the stor\ of radio, what it could do for me if I gave it a trial. So It that moment 1 made up my mind, picked up the plume and called John. That started it. and I've been on the air ooking back ovei the figures, 1 wasn't a bit surprised to find that the first year in radio we spent only 5% of our total advertising appropriation on radio; 80% of our money went into newspaper advertising, the rest in outdoor boards. Today, radio and newspaper ads take a fifty-fifty cut of our advertising money, that is about $3,000 allocated for each; the remainder goes into outdoor display signs and memorandum advertising such as calendars, matches, etc. Before I go into an explanation of what we used on the air, and how we merchandised our programs, let me give you a result figure: This year our business, in dollars and cents, will be up to our 1929 volume ; and our average prices are 32% lower than they were 11 years ago! A comeback like that can be attributed only to one thing (after deducting, of course, the essentials of any business, such as prompt service, expert work, etc.) and that is proper advertising methods! Now let me tell you something about our business setup in Kalamazoo. Our town has a population of about 55,000. With the surrounding population included, all within a radius of two and one-half miles, the figure runs around 78,000. But the Kalamazoo Laundry Company services 31 other towns besides Kalamazoo; towns like South Haven, Three Rivers, Bangor and Galesburg, all ranging in individual population from 200 to 6,000. In these towns, we have service stations where customers can leave their bundles. Thus, our prospective customers are scattered around and about us in a circle of, roughly, one hundred miles. That sort of widespread customer location can be covered completely only by radio! We've had a good many different types of programs on the air since 1932, so I'm going to tell you about our present schedule in general and about one particular program in it. Ten months ago, I attended a laundry convention in Chicago. Sitting in the lounge one evening, I mentioned to a few of the men present that I intended to start a diaper service when I got back home. Some of them laughed, others seriously warned me that it wasn't a profitable department to have and illustrated their advice with examples of the difficulties they had encountered in their own towns. But I guess I'm just a Stubborn Irishman. So when 1 returned to Kalamazoo, I instituted I diaper service! Knowing that the new service would need some hacking. I went into a huddle with John O* Harrow, NVKZO's salesmanager, and we 41 RADIO SH OWM A NSM IP