Sponsor (July-Dec 1950)

r in Syracuse, N. Y. WFBL now delivers more than TWICE as many listeners DAYTIMES as the next most popular station in Syracuse! Call FREE & PETERS for Availabilities WFBL SYRACUSE, NEW YORK BASIC SINCE 1927 GROWING GROWING GROWN MORNING PERIOD* PLUS... a 14.8 Over-all Audience Increase Since 1949 ANOTHER BONUS FOR ADVERTISERS... Special merchandising department for extra promotion of sales. 'January, February, 1950 Hooper WABB AM 5,000 Watts FM 50,000 Watts AMERICAN BROADCASTING COMPANY OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE MOBILE PRESS REGISTER NATIONALLY REPRESENTED BY THE BRANHAM COMPANY 3. Once the Hormel girls arrive, the publicity possibilities are infinite. Since the girls are a recognized drum and bugle team which has competed at the annual American Legion convention, parades with local A.L. posts are a natural. The girls also entertain at veterans' hospitals, appear on disk jockey programs, and with women commentators, do marching demonstrations at football games and in general spread themselves all over each area they visit like a band of female commandos. 4. By the time the girls arrive in any town, a local Hormel talent search has reached a climax. Hormel advance men start the talent search a month before the girls arrive. Usually, the five finalists in the search perform on a local 15-minute program, which Hormel pays for. The contestant who gets the highest rating on an applause meter appears on the Hormel network show. And runner-ups may be chosen to perform as well if they happen to be particularly suitable. The talent search, reminiscent of the Horace Heidi ( Philip Morris) and the Amateur Hour (Old Gold ) operations, is one more way in which the Hormel girls squeeze the utmost out of local publicity for their radio show and their merchandising operations. 5. The actual day-to-day merchandising is a teamwork proposition. The girls divide into pairs, in a manner recalling the wartime "foxhole-buddy" system. A typical day for a team of the girls might start like this: Anne: Good morning, Mr. Jones (local grocer), I'm Anne, the saxophone player on the Hormel radio program. And this is Cynthia, our featured singer. Cynthia: We hope you listen to our radio show and now Mr. Jones we'd like to tell you about some Hormel products you may not be familiar with. Anne: [thumbing through account book) Mr. Jones, you already sell two cases of Spam a month. But did you know that Hormel also makes fast-selling cans of Vienna sausage? . . . As the bit of dialogue above indicates, a primary objective of Hormel girl activities is to get grocers to stock and push additional varieties of Hormel products. Human to the core, grocerymen are inclined to let things ride. If one Hormel product sells, why bother looking for a second? But the girls change that. It is the radio show which gives the girls their greatest power over the grocers. They come to him, not as ordinary food sales people, but as celebrities stepping from behind the footlights to bring their radio commercials straight into the store. Most grocers are amazed at the visit; many ask for autographs or pictures to take home to the kids; almost all sign up for new varieties of Hormel products, or open first accounts with Hormel. While one Hormel girl signs up the grocer, another may be setting up a Hormel display, or moving cans of Hormel meats to the front of a shelf. The girls act like any other route man might — except that they've got the power of their cute Hormel uniforms, their sex (which is not over-played, incidentally), and their radio fame. The company has found that the girls can do a far better job of cracking the ice than even the best male salesmen. Because the Hormel girls are a ready-made group of relatively "visual" entertainers, television seems like a logical next step for the company. Some months ago Jay Hormel journeyed down to Chicago from his headquarters in Austin, Minn., to see a trial performance of a TV version of the Hormel show. The impression of some onlookers, who spent part of their onlooking time watching the expression on Jay Hormel's face, is that a Hormel TV show is not in the cards in the immediate future. Jay Hormel is particularly pleased with the traveling aspects of the Hormel show. But a TV show couldn't travel readily. The Amateur Hour, for example, travels its AM version from time to time, but keeps its TV stanza always at home. On the other hand, the recent TV move of the Horace Heidt show may suggest possibilities for Hormel. Philip Morris now airs a TV version of the Heidt show and still keeps it on the road. The gimmick: TV version is filmed, shown at a different time than the AM show. This cuts way down on the technical problems. A traveling show is always expensive; this is doubly (as a guess) true in the case of the Hormel girls. The thought of a long column of automobiles burning up gasoline and tires weekly is enough to make any auditor shudder. But the automobiles give the pairs of girls mobility which pays off in sales to grocers. Accordingly, a good part of the cost of travel is borne by the sales budget. What portion of it is charged to advertising and what 11 SPONSOR