Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1964)

will make many new friends for you and your eompany." Freberg solemnly explains on the air, adding, "They'll generate love . . ." They generated more than that. For one thing, they generated an idea at the Boston office of K&E, where the Freberg commercial was taken at more than face value. Why not have a real bunch of New Prince Spaghetti Minstrels? The question was posed collectively by Daryl Bach, director and vice president; John H. Dowd, account supervisor, and Greco as account man. Bach felt the real-life Minstrels should conduct "noodle-nannies" at supermarkets because, he explains, "HunK)r in commercials without humor backing up the sale is only half a job done." (As good examples of humor, he cites the $100, 000 spot tv campaign out of DCS&S for Narragansett beer with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, also the Freberg "Freedle Family Singers" for the holder of a Los Angeles Coca-Cola bottling franchise.) Meanwhile, back on the campus of Stonehill College, a Roman Catholic institution in North Easton, Mass., seven youngsters got a different kind of message out of the Freberg spiel. If the Prince Co. needed new Minstrels, they knew who the troupe should be — themselves. The seven — George Hallisey, Bob Mazetta, Carol Metcalfe, Kayc de Bettencourt, Fred Dill, Jr., Paul Toner and Jack Neves — already were folksinging on the side. Calling themselves the Wind-de-Lo Singers, they'd been playing sporadic concert dates in the Greater Boston area. Leader Hallisey collared the group's local talent agents. Lordly & Dame, Inc., however, and outlined their newest idea, whereupon the whole bunch traveled up to Lowell and there, beneath president Petlegrino's office window, began to serenade their prospect with the now-famous Prince quatrain: "Gold is the color of my true love's noodles." "I'm an impulsive man," Pellegrino the elder explains today. "So 1 hired 'em for the summer." His son purchased a Volkswagen Microbus. affixed a baggage rack for the instruments and dispatched the group — to the undisguised glee of K&E, which had been spared the selling on Pellegrinos. Co py platform, an excerpt* Boss: . . . what Prince really needs is a slogan. Something we can paint right up there on our smokestack! Man: Great , . . how's this: "Tippecanoe anci Spaghetti too?" Boss: No. Man: "Remember the Macaroni." Boss: Hardly. Man: "Don't give up the Sauce?" Boss: Ahem . . . Man: How's this one: "Walk softly and carry a big noodle!" Boss: No. it needs something that . . . Man: 1 got it! "Prince: first in spaghetti, first in sauce and first in the hearts of Lowell, Massachusetts, home of Prince spaghetti and noodle prod ucts . . . Boss: Thai's kind of long to fit on the smokestack, isn't it? . . . * Courtesy Freberg, Ltd. (but not very) The agency also conceived the idea of arming the Minstrels with petitions to hand out at supermarkets, urging customers to clamor for the full-time retention of the Minstrels. Always game, the crowds responded. Thus, love was indeed generated. And so were sales. The summer months are usually off months for spaghetti, but Prince's line moved ever so briskly — up 3 percent at Tedeschi's in Massachusetts, 5 percent at Acme in upstate New York, 7 percent at Food Fair in Philadelphia. And when his Minstrels weren't playing the supermarket circuits, community-minded Pellegrino sent them out to fund-raising spaghetti festivals, even lent them to the New York World's Fair. And so it went all summer long. Then one day in early autumn, General Artists Corp. called up Pellegrino. Had the Minstrels an agent? They had. Had it occurred to Mr. Pellegrino that the Minstrels might play legitimate club dates? It had not. Enter GAC, exeunt as booking agents Lordly & Dame, though they continue to be personal managers. Next thing the new new Minstrels knew, they were singing at The Thunderbird in Las Vegas. And they returned to Lowell only to discover that they were now on the payroll of Grotto Productions, Inc., a non-spaghetti producing subsidiary of Prince Macaroni Mfg. Co. It is Grotto that hired GAC which, in turn, books the singers (current take: $4000 per week), deducts its 10 percent, then passes the rest on to headquarters ir Lowell which, in turn, keeps the Minstrels on a straight salary (something under $3600 a week). "We hadn't intended to get into the minstrel business," says young Pellegrino wryly, "but it's ending; up that way, isn't it?" It is, indeed. The group is on the verge of signing a contract with New York's Roulette Records, and GAC predicts a bright future for its newest property. Meanwhile, back at the Hollywood ranch, Freberg's contract ($5000 per commercial) had just been renewed for another series of ten. Pellegrino, Sr. says, "I love this man ... he has made us talked about wherever we go." And yet, Freberg, Ltd. had only an academic — certainly not a commercial — interest in the real-life New Prince Spaghetti Minstrels that his commercials had jokingly created. To keep everybody happy, K&E came up with the idea of utilizing again the "original" New Prince Spaghetti Minstrels — Judd ConIon's crew — and Freberg, of course, on a premium LP to be called, one would think, "Music To Slurp Spaghetti By." In this way, Capitol Records would become involved and Freberg wouldn't feel shut out or shot under. Little wonder, therefore, that during his stay in Boston, Freberg had nothing but kind things to say about K&E. "That's an agency that works for its money," he told Sponsor. "I like the way they operate." So do the Pellegrinos, who are convinced that if it hadn't been for the touring Minstrels, sales for the first nine months of 1964 would never have realized their 18 percent climb over last year's comparable period. Nor would October and projected November orders from retail outlets be up a giant 25 percent. Result: 85 percent of the firm's 1965 budget of $850,000 is earmarked for radio and minstrel promotions in Prince's marketing areas. But are the Pellegrinos calling a halt? "Hell no," says young Joe. "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 2.5 percent of the population is of Italian ancestry. That leaves us with 97.5 percent of the people to convert into steady spaghetti eaters." ♦ lil^ 34 SPONSOR ''*bei 14