Sponsor (Nov 1947-Oct 1948)

r ■^ imiare the eost eaiiiiiaigiis «*4»-4»|i^» Ii4'«*aiis«^ Ili4\v piii|ii»iiil iiii|ia4*l ill 4'aeli iiiarkt^t V. J spot More and more sales managers of national advertisers are insisting that their advertising budgets include dealer cooperative allowances. Except in the case of soaps, foods, drugs, and a few other mass-produced and mass-sold products, 20% of most organizations' dealers produce 80% of their volume and even a higher percentage of their profit. Advertising allowances, either on a per-unit basis (so much for each refrigerator ordered, etc.), or on a total volume basis, can and do increase the dealers' push behind the line of products with the allowance. Advertising managers, however, frequently look upon ad allowances as a polite manner of giving retailers extra discounts. They do not like to see part of their budgets spent beyond their control. In fact a sizable percentage (37%) of sponsor's cross-section of ad managers believe that dollar for dollar they do not get their money's worth in space or airtime when they share costs with retailers. They are less prone to question the effectiveness of sharing space in newspapers than of sharing airtime. Newspaper advertising space can be seen while it's impossible, except in big population areas, to check airtime. Regardless of how advertising managers feel, dealer cooperative advertising on the air is on the increase. It takes three basic forms. First there is the allowance which is spent as the dealer desires — of course only to advertise the manufacturer's product. Then there is the allowance that is spent on time for a specially prepared transcription on which local dealer announcements are tacked fore and aft. Finally there is the allowance which is spent for preparing a transcribed program for which the dealer pays the entire time bill. The only co-op in the latter case is the furnishing of the program, tie-in advertising, and suggested dealer advertising copy. The advertising manager is not too concerned with the final form of dealer cooperative advertising. He thinks of it as a mat service. The practice of furnishing retailers with advertising in cut or mat form is almost as old as advertising itself. Making available to dealers programs which they can sponsor to advertise the manufacturer's products locally is more expensive than making black-and-white copy and art available. However, whereas in the black-and-white copy the manufacturer's trade name and product compete with the dealer's name and copy, there is little competition between national and local copy on the air program. Only one appeal can be heard at a time. Frequentl\ the program that is made available to local advertisers is an openend transcription for which the manufacturer pays the franchise rate for the dealer's area. In many cases the manufacturer pays a percentage of both the cost of the transcription and the time. A typical example of the latter is the cooperative operation of Borg-Warner Norge division. Norge is making the Alan Ladd and Freddie Martin programs available to its dealers. If the dealer is sponsoring one of the program series for Norge, he pays one-half of time and transcription costs, the distributor pays one-sixth, and the factory pays one-third. If on the other hand the local distributor decides to sponsor the program himself then he pays one-third and the factory two-thirds. There is another advantage for the dealers besides the sharing of costs. On a special deal by a manufacturer the transcription company is usually willing to scale down the franchise cost for each area, since it is guaranteed a number of sales which it would otherwise have to make itself. In some cases sales objectives must be achieved before the manufacturer is willing to share costs of a dealer broadcast campaign. In the Philco arrangement for dealer sponsorship of Myrl and Marge and Flight with Music, Philco shared costs when a dealer met his quota. In many cases this has been an incentive for a dealer to push Philco instead of a competing brand. It is this impact which makes sales managers favor dealer cooperative advertising. It's a spur which prods dealers into doing a better selling job. Although Philco has a network program (Crosb> — ABC) it felt the need for broadcast advertising at the local level. The dealer co-op formula is Philco's answer to this need. It has increased sales in the areas which have used Philco's dealer plan as high as 300% over areas in which there was no local effort. Another network advertiser using dealer cooperative programs is the Brown Shoe Company, which has Ed McConnell Saturday mornings on NBC. Smiling Ed has a substantial audience and an unusual selling record for Brown Shoe. The compan>', however, wanted something extra with which to spur shoe dealers to special efforts on Brown Shoes (its Buster Brown and other linesj. It turned to the Ziv program, Barry Wood Show, and made it available to shoe dealers in 53 markets. This campaign is too new to have developed a case histor\' but in some Barry Wood markets there already is an increase in Brown Shoe sales. It is difficult for a manufacturer to control what goes on the local air along with his transcribed program and prepared national advertising copy. Many advertising managers feel that the local copy isn't what it should be. They can't afford in either money or time costs offthe-air recordings on every local dealer cooperative schedule, for checking purposes. In big cities, where there are local checking services, most national advertisers pay the latter to check not only (Please turn to page 104) 42 SPONSOR