Sponsor (July-Dec 1951)

What can radio do to sell itself more effectively to ail vert isers? Douglas Ballin, Jr. Advertising Manager Whitehall Pharmacal Co. New York Mr. McAndrews The picked panel answers Mr. Ballin Organize — organize — organize! Stop trying to carry the whole load as individuals and start sharing the hurden as an industry. Support to the limit Broadcast Advertising Bureau for national promotion. Support to the limit the state association for regional promotion. Support to the limit the city or district association for local promotion. If there isn't such an association, start one. Every dime a broadcaster spends on concerted association sales activity, every hour he contributes to its work, carries double reward. First, his station benefits from the resultant sale of radio as a medium. Then his salesmen and his promotion staff are freed from much of the necessity of selling radio and can work on selling a specific station, time, and program. If they need ammunition to help sell the medium first, the association they support supplies it. In our area, broadcasters who have tried organized promotion, like it. Two years ago the Southern California Broadcasters Association had 34 members. Today it has 58, paying their dues, their special campaign assessments, and their levies of time for general meetings and committee activities uncomplainingly. The 250-watters in small markets work and pay side by side with metropolitan 50,000-watters. "Tough" advertisers of the old printed media school, who wouldn't even grant a time salesman an interview, have given audiences to sales committees representing the entire industry. They have been impressed with the neutrality of research presentations on behalf of radio made up by the Association, without so much as the name of a single station mentioned. They have been first puzzled, then gratified with the refreshing novelty of competitive station sales managers cooperating instead of attacking, working together to help the advertiser first test, then use radio profitably. And they have bought where they have never bought before. Other media long ago learned the value of joint promotion. It's radio's turn. Robert J. McAndrews Managing Director Southern California Broadcasters' Association H ollyivood Radio needs to regain confidence in itself. From order taking to selling is going JK_ to be a long, hard road for most of radio to follow. It will take some good, honest pricing, and a lot of hard work. In the honest thinking department. y " Mr. Wade radio's touch is no longer magic for the average advertiser — this touch has theoretically gone to television. Few radio people actually know how or why advertisers and their agencies are using radio, even though they have used it steadily over many years. Presentations of radio time for spot or network miss the point by a mile, and advertisers who do not turn to some other media have to work out their own campaign and then buy it. Radio could well turn to its successful advertisers and find out why they are still there, and what it will require to keep them there. Honest pricing in radio will be of utmost importance in the future. Radio must base its rates closer to its actual circulation than to its potential circulation on a given station. The plus audience in radio started to go before television entered the picture with the greatly increased number of stations, but radio did not advertise the fact that there are six or seven radio stations in a city or area today where there were only three or four preceding 1945. Industry spokesmen who are speaking against rate reductions outside of TV areas have ignored this factor as though it didn't exist, but it does, and the result finds the advertiser with less selling power via radio than he had before, at the same price, and despite the increase in radio homes. Television, of course, is pretty definite in its contribution to radio's circulation loss, and as far as radio is concerned, a television home should be considered by radio in the same manner radio considers listening in automobiles— a definite plus. To my mind, you can no longer count the TV homes as radio homes as well. If the thinking is right and the pricing is right, then radio can get down lo tlie hard task of setting its house 176 SPONSOR