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the News Front
Sponsorship of the News Has Upped Business 43% Says Louis J. Gauss, President of the Gauss Mortuary, Peoria
A NEWS broadcast for a mortuary? When I first started thinking along those lines, there was a lot of hesitation on my part. To the best knowledge of everyone concerned, no mortuary in the country had sponsored such a direct and important broadcast as the news seven days a week.
Well, we're now in our third year of news sponsorship, and our business has increased approximately 43 percent.
We also use radio to advertise our ambulance service, so chalk up some more influence to the credit side of radio; we estimate that we have about 75 percent of all the ambulance business in Peoria, 111. This, even in view of the fact that there are 16 local mortuaries and six ambulance services in direct competition.
1939 was by no means my first appearance in the field of radio advertising. As far back as 1932, I was on \VMBD with a quarter-hour program of organ music direct from our chapel every Sunday morning. That gave way to a Sunday series of transcriptions dramatizing the lives of great Americans. Results were so good that I decided to increase my radio budget, and that was the time Florence Luedeke, WMBD saleswoman, started to lead me up to the sponsorship of a daily news program. I picked the 12:15-12:30 P.M. period as the one that would be best suited for our sponsorship.
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The results from this news program have placed my business in the position it now enjoys. Our business started in a warehouse on South Adams street in 1912 with a horse drawn livery, and our policy has always been one of steady and consistent enlargement rather than spectacular spurts.
And because that has been our policy, we have given considerable thought and attention to our commercial messages. We take pride in ' jP them, and feel that the)
C^ achieve fairness and dig
nity in a remarkably brief style. I'll quote one, picked at random for one of the noontime news broadcasts:
(SOUND EFFECTS)
Announcer: This is Vince Lloyd speaking, bringing you last minute world and local news, through the courtesy of Gauss Mortuary and Gauss Instant Ambulance Service, 111 North Perry.
(Pause)
Statements unsupported by facts are of little value. But every statement made by Gauss is backed by a record of service in this community that extends over the past 29 years. Every Gauss conducted service, regardless of how much or how little it may have cost, has been an impressive ceremony . . . every effort has been made to spare the family unnecessary worry or concern. Today, as during the past 29 years . . . Gauss stands ready to serve the families of Peoria and vicinity with the best that modern methods, highly skilled service and faithful efforts can provide!
Consult Gauss . . . any hour of the day or night. Telephone 7-1-8-4.
Now .
(NEWS)
world news.
Announcer: And now, local news, as compiled by the editors of the Peoria Journal-Transcript.
{Continued on page 30)
RADIO SHOWMANSHIP