Sponsor (1964)

PROBING THE CURRENTS AND UNDERCURRENTS OF BROADCAST ADVERTISING Burnett, FSR Republican tom-toms Look for Fuller & Smith & Ross to remain in the Republican presidential campaign picture, despite the fact Leo Burnett will be ladling it out for the Republican National Committee. Burnett will have a kitty of around $3.5 million, while F&S&R will, it is expected, handle between $2.5 and $3 million for the Citizens Committee for Goldwater. Burnett is working on a contract which has a year to go. Where are young generation leaders Has new leadership been conspicuously slow in emerging from among the newer generation of broadcasters? It's a question you hear more and more often from observers of the industry. And with this there comes the corollary query: is much of the leadership blood getting too old and tired, too smug and blase to engender approaches and concepts indigenous to the times? The observers report, among other things, a growing resentment among tv stations in the secondary market for the anticipated effects of the NAB revised tv code which becomes effective in September. Many secondary markets, note the observers, have come to view the revisions as having been whipped through without ample allowance for their special problems and competitive disadvantages on the economic front. Their qualm: whether the present leadership hasn't been indulging in too much brinkmanship for the general good. How agencies get themselves trapped Agencies have their moments of irony but perhaps the most bitter come from things into which they led clients — like prc-testing commercials. The pre-test idea, as a rule, started out as a confidence building byplay — a gesture by which the agencies hoped to show their creative judgment reinforced by research. Now the same agencies find that they have baited their own trap. Ad managers have become more interested in the "scores" gained in the commercial's test than in the ingenuity and sales effectiveness in the agency's commercial creation. Many an ad manager wants to know what his competitor's prod uct scored on a test, and then arbitrarily demands a score which is two or three times the tally obtained by the competitor. In brief, numbers, regardless of the validity of their sources, have replaced judgment and experience. Ground coffee and FM go together? Did you know that the consumer profile on ground coffee is quite different from instant coffee? The main difference: the instant kind has a much broader consumer appeal. Sponsor Scope came upon this nuance while checking a report about Maxwell House Coffee's ground division and use of FM. The report: the ground brand did so well with a 13-week campaign on WABC-FM New York in connection with the World's Fair that there was a good likelihood of Maxwell House ground coffee making more use of the FM medium. Response out of White Plains, home of the General Foods executive domain: "we're seriously weighing the idea." Bigger families heavier tv users What has contributed much to tv's potency as a seller of package goods is the consistently sturdy use of the medium during prime hours by the larger families. To put the larger family versus the viewing family in perspective, here's an excerpt from the NT report for March-April. TIME SPAN SETS-IN-USE 1-2 FAMILIES 5-PLUS FAMILIES 7-8 p.m. 56.4% 49.2% 62.5% 8-9 p.m. 63.9 54.7 71.7 9-10 p.m. 64.1 53.8 71.2 10-11 p.m. 53.1 42.8 59.0 AVERAGE 59.4 50.0 66.1 Reunion of U.S. Steel and net tv? Don't be surprised if U.S. Steel (BBDO) returns to the precincts of regular network tv for the 1965-66 season. There's something reported to be in the works. The steel giant withdrew from its network franchise in June. 1963. after sponsoring the U.S. Steel Hour unbrokcnK for about 25 years, moving from radio to tv. This year U.S. Steel spent quite a wad lor a World's Fair network special. The '63 pullout was said to have been motivated by a profits situation. 26 SPONSOf