Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

^Metro man' and mass media There have been more social changes in the last 25 years than in the previous 1000 — among them, the rise of the "metro man" who lives in high-rise city apartments, guarded by doormen, and who works in offices or plants inaccessible to the old-style insurance agent. That's what Pierre D. Martineau, director of research and marketing. The Chicago Tribune, told the Life Insurance Advertisers Assn. at their recent annual meeting. Because of these modifica tions, he said, insurance companies should abandon the agency system of seUing. The only way to get the life-insurance message across to the consumer is through the use of "relevant and meaningful mass communication," Martineau advised. "Metro men" are not impressed by company size or reputation. They simply want to know, "Can you do more for me at a lower price, and if not, why not?" The successful way to reach them is through the proper use of mass media. quiet entertainment is expected to return resounding results. "Used on the Jack Benny Show, which already enjoys widespread sponsor-identification with State Farm, the commercial should produce measureable gains in the public's association of life insurance and State Farm," says Foote. • Travelers. Network television and national magazines have been carrying the majority of Travelers' advertising this year, the 100th anniversary of the companies. On tv, Travelers sponsors the awardwinning public affairs series, CBS Reports. This program reaches a large audience of top prospects for the sale of all forms of insurance, according to Herbert Kramer, director of public information and advertising. High point of the 1963-64 series, he adds, was the 90-minute special, D-Day Plus Twenty Years, in which Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower revisited the battlefields of the Normandy invasion. For the first time in CBS network history, a perfect station clearance record was achieved for a scheduled network program. Also, Travelers co-sponsored, for the sixth consecutive year, the twoday telecast of the Masters Golf Tournament. • Union Central. Although its major emphasis is on consumer magazines, Union Central will continue to have at least one network tv show per year by repeating the NBC Project 20 presentation. The Coming of Christ, scheduled in December. ♦ Ey their trademark, shall ye know them? "The average person is exposed to between 800 and 1100 commercial messages a day, each day. Very few of them implant a significant memory image." So says Royal Dadmun, president of the design and marketing consultant firm that bears his name. This seems notably true in the insurance field. Even longtime use of a company trademark does not assure that the public will identify it correctly or that the trademark will necessarily communicate favorable concepts. Such are the results of Insurance Company Symbolism, a research study just completed by Royal Dadmun & Associates. Highest figure for correct trademark identification (with company name masked) was 64 percent for Prudential's Rock of Gibraltar. Metropolitan Life Insurance's long-used tower symbol was correctly identified by only 31 percent of the 183 respondents tested. When respondents were shown insurance company trademarks and asked to identify the type of business they represented, 41 percent associated the Travelers umbrella with insurance. Just 16 percent identified the Mutual of New York (MONY) symbol with insurance, and 13 percent associated Connecticut General's contemporary monogram with insurance. (In fact, 65 percent identified it with industrial goods.) Dadmun notes that, in their attempts to reach the consuming public directly via print media and tv advertising, many other financial institutions — such as banks and brokerage firms — may be encountering an equal need for effective trademarks. November 2, 1964 33!