Sponsor (July-Dec 1950)

Mr. IFendeU Moore Campbell-Ewald Co. Detroit, Michigan Dear Wendell: Yuh shore made a smart move when tZ7&?\ yuh bought PTdrJ them Chevrolet X5 i£> spots on WCHS! Not oney is Charleston, West Vir ginny, one uv th' real /mmUk bright spots in t h' c o u n t ry's (l/wtjJiiijhlrrjTr business picture, but yuh picked out th' station Ton^B^ 11 thet recly gives M^Wl yuh a bargain ! GB7,\ It oney costs ImoreI Ithane w\\ half as much ter buy WCHS as Ialli ter buy all th' Ithe„H {I other four Charleston stations, but yuh 'IK> gits more lissen SS^P^ ers day or night on good ole 580 W47&?'' On Yer Dial! Yessir, Wendell, yer gittin 28 per cent more night-time lisseners, and 15 percent more durin th' day! When yuh goes alookin fer spots agin, 'member thet in Charleston, West Vir ginny, one 11 git yi th more then all th' other four — WCHS! Yrs. Algy w c H S Charleston , W. Va. In Washington PEOPLE'S DRUG STORES one of America's great chains chooses WWDC EXCLUSIVELY! 24 Newscasts daily WWDC is the greatest radio buy in Washington. See your For joe man today. to sales remains a fiscal mystery. But the proportion of advertising money allotted to the various media is no secret. For 1949, radio got 20%; magazines 40%; newspapers 20%; point-of-sale, etc. 20%. In 1950, radio got a larger share, 30% ; magazines, 40%; newspapers, 15%; point-of-sale, etc. 15%. Total ad expenditure for 1950 was $1,500,000. The company considers magazines its backbone medium. The feeling is that color advertising is necessary to arouse the appetite of the potential customer. Obviously, the emphasis of Hormel and other meat-specialty company advertising may be due for a radical change within the next few years as color television emerges. Among the unique aspects of the Hormel show none is more noteworthy than the company's arrangements with one James Caesar Petrillo. There simply are none, formally. The show is so atypical that Petrillo's and other unions prefer not to try to classify the Hormel talent. Their tolerance in this respect is attributable to the fact that Hormel girls earn as much in salary and allowances as musicians' union and AFRA members. (Basic pay of Hormel girls starts at $55 weekly; uniforms, liberal vacations, and other allowances make the actual total earnings much higher.) Nowhere in the rest of the meatpacking business is there an operation like the Hormel girls. Armour and Swift, for example, both big radio spenders, use familiar types of network programing (Swift, Breakfast Club, ABC, Armour, Stars Over Hollywood, CBS). In fact, nowhere among sponsored shows is there one to approach the Hormel operation for complexity upon complexity of angles, gimmicks, and inter-related factors. Yet the Hormel show has a basic soundness. By traveling, it makes friends for the company locally. This gives it some of the strength of a spot-radio effort. The late George A. Hormel, the man who set up a pork-packing business in an old creamery and proceeded to make it one of the largest in the country, would have been proud of his son Jay HormePs unorthodox and canny approach to radio selling and product merchandising. Currently, Hormel is leading the canned-meat industry in consumption gains. Hormel spokesmen say it's largely because of the over-theair and in-the-store saleswomanship of the Hormel girls. • * • FARM DIRECTOR [Continued from page 31) losophy. "Advertisers should allow farm directors to rewrite any part or all of their commercials to suit personal style and audience," he told SPONSOR. The great majority of farm directors agree with WWL's Shannon. Their reasoning is that the rapport between farm director and farm listener is so complete that listeners will detect and resent slickly written, New Yorkcreated copy. Same reasoning lies behind the belief of most farm directors that transcriptions must be chosen carefully for a rural audience. They can't be too citified and smooth; nor can they be too "rustic" if the rustic quality is synthetic. Listeners' sensitivity to false notes in commercial copy is particularly acute because many of them are apt to know the farm director personally. George Shannon, for example, visits many farmers each month, attends all the agricultural events in the WWL area. Dix Harper, farm service director at WIOU, Kokomo, Ind., told sponsor that his commercial technique was built to a large extent on customer testimonials. Harper, like other farm directors, gets around the countryside a lot. When he discovers a farmer with a good story to tell about one of his sponsors' products, he puts the farmer's voice on tape. To give you an idea of what Harper means when he says that he gets around, here are some statistics. Miles traveled in past year: 35.000; farm meetings where he delivered speeches: 154; fairs from which he conducted broadcasts: 23. Each such appearance is a plus for the sponsor. Actually, when Harper goes out to do a remote broadcast from a fair booth, he's giving his sponsors all the visual benefits of a television show — with something more besides. There are die big banners with the sponsor's brand name decorating the booth and giving the show visual sponsor identification. And there's an opportunity for displays of the merchandise itself. How well do Dix Harper's efforts pay off? The following excerpts from a report Dix Harper made to SPONSOR tell the story. "In 1949, the Howard County Farm Bureau Co-op had gross sales of approximately $2,000,000. Their gross 74 SPONSOR