Sponsor (Apr-June 1961)

and do use local sports coverage with creative flair is the Armour sponsorship of local scoreboards. The approach here is "just about as local and folksy as a national product can get" — as one rep describes it — with the station's suggestion of good picnic places to visit after the game — ■ remembering, incidentally, to take Armour products along. Fonda paper plates employs a similar approach. Of considerable interest, too, is the sales effort being generated by reps for broader national recognition of radio's special events. Blair, in fact, fias created a Special Features Department, headed by Jim Richards, which directs its efforts toward selling events not heretofore regarded as grist for the national advertiser's mill. A recent sale of helicopter traffic reports on KING, Seattle, to Volvo automobiles (an eight-week schedule of traffic reports on a morning strip basis, six days a week) has sncouraged the new department. "If we can help our stations sell local special events and features, as well as local news," Richards says, "it will mable them to gain those additional revenues to pour back into their news md special events departments, rhese two areas of programing are idtal in building and maintaining a healthy community image." "Local news, weather, sports, special events — they're all goldmines," Rep Robert Eastman declares with unequivocal conviction. "They are radio. And it's rather an indisputable fact that much of a community's life is regulated by the weather reports and time signals of its radio stations." It is with time signals, Eastman declares, that one of the grossest inadequacies in buying and selling today's radio is seriously exposed. "In earlier days of radio," he says, "when time itself was less significant than it is todav, you couldn't go far or for long without being reminded that it's 7:30 Bulova Watch Time. Radio time signals are paramount in any recounting of the Bulova success story. But today, when even the smallest community is timeconscious and time-prone — when radio, more than ever, is the heartbeat of time — there are few, if any, time signal takers on the national scene." Time-saving devices (i.e., watches, instant foods) are passing up one of radio's primary services, Eastman claims. Adding: "If ever a single medium offered such real opportunity for creative advertising, it is here." Under consideration : a test of West Coast stations by Johnson and Johnson baby powder, through Young & Rubicam, sponsoring time signals between 7 a.m. -4 p.m. Third in the arena of inventive buying is "community pride" programing. Unlike grass-roots staples such as News, Weather, etc., the very nature of these so-called secondary services leaves them far from definitive or packageable. Which is partly responsible for the national advertiser's indifference, one station manager told sponsor. Buvina as he usu ally does with accustomed singularity— spot announcements or nonintegrated participations in disk jockey shows, women's program, etc., the more or less established formats — the national advertiser tends to regard programs of community pride and pleasure as uninspiring, even taboo, avails. But it is in these programs, so indigenous to local radio, that he is missing first-rate opportunity to solidify a quality image. Two national products supplying welcome proof of the pudding are Schweppes and Arnold Bread, sponsors of the Boston Pops concerts on WCRB, Boston (2% hours every Sunday afternoon on a 52-week schedule). As one rep puts it, "Here is creative use of local radio at its most meaningful. Being associated with a community's (Please turn to page 52) Community-service radio: its creative areas are considerable— and wide open PROVOCATIVE national buys, such as those pioneered by GMAC, International Nickel, Armour, make obsolete the conventional view that national advertisers have no place in the sponsorship of community service programing. It is just such programing that builds lasting product image. RADIO'S claim that no other medium can equal it for intimacy and community image is brilliantly upheld by such successes as Cream of Wheat and Eljer have enjoyed. Copy creativeness in meeting local needs and views opens new avenues to sales-conscious national advertisers. LOCAL radio's editorial vitality gives product identification with community service an awareness-and-sales boost available in no other medium. Loyalty to a community-conscious station creates loyalty to its advertisers. Neither newspapers nor television affords such personal relating. aiciii t:*3j; !:i/.;Y>~'''i:>i WSB3EB£BB&B§9mEBBBB3Bm SPONSOR 19 june 1961 31