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Hit in the Mail Department
by LEO BOULETTE, Leo Boulette Adv. Agency
How many of these comj^laints can a station afford to receive? The answer is ()b\iotis, and when next you come around lo buy time, it's no go. AVhen a reputable achertiser in the same line of business (omes along he's liable lo get the same l)riish-off.
JJon't get the idea that the advertiser is the only violator in direct selling. There are stations and station reps who have absoluteh no business carrying direct sale accounts. They do an excellent job ol broadcasting but they just simply are not mail pull stations. However, they'll spend S50 on long distance calls soliciting an account when they know in advance that it will be cancelled after three or four weeks because of no response.
There are agencies who buy time on these stations, knowing in advance that they won't pay out, that the schedules will be cancelled. But if the station billing is a hundred a week and they buv 40 of these unprodtictive stations they can (ancel out after a month and pocket 15 per cent of the client's $16,000.
Ihk average American housewife has an extremely generous temperament and she's not quite as nai\e nor as gtdlible as some people think. She's got the bucks to pay and the desire to buy. She's been exposed to a terrific amount of high pressure salesmanship, and when she goes to the store to buy a box of soap flakes she knows that all of the brands on display are not the hr.st. It's true that she can be looked. Biu onh ojire, as a rulel
If \ou tell her Grade A then .sell her Grade A. It's what she wants, it's what she's paying for and it's what she has every right to expect. Give her anything less than Grade A and you've lost the best customer in the world.
Ihere are a dozen exceptionally fine mail pull stations in the coiuitry who have experienced so much grief with direct sale accounts that they have simply stopped accepting any product involving direct sale over the air. Other large stations have created consumer acceptance groups, groups of women in their listening audience who examine and okay every direct sale deal before it is accepted. This system works pretty well on most deals, but unless the advertiser is sincerely concerned with doing an honest job. it's a shallow assurance at best.
What's the answer? How can the industry segregate the honest advertiser from the unscrupulous promoter? How can the honest advertiser determine which station wants to do a merchandising job and which station is interested onlv in a fat billing? It's a S64.000,000 question and the NAB ought to answer it before the FCC does!
JULY, 1946
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