Sponsor (July-Dec 1953)

As a sale is consummated, the customer is given a questionnaire card which asks four questions i see page 37 for text). Originallj the < ard included additional questions which have since proved unnecessary. 1 he agency is primaril) concerned with what brings the customer into the store (an open end question) and where he has seen or heard Rayco advertising in the three major media — radio, newspaper or TV. Uso whether he has seen or heard Rayco advertised elsewhere ("elsewhere" includes direct mail, bill boards and telephone directories). The fourth question concerns the area of town in which the customer lives and is used by the agency to determine the effective coverage of Kayo advertising and 1)\ Rayco's statistical and real estate departments in determining market potentials and new location sites. At the end of each week the dealer mails all the cards to the agenc\ in a self-addressed postage-free envelope. B\ monday morning four tabulators and two researchers (who interpret the figures) go to work. Using "Rayco Work Sheets.' which are the key to the entire system, this SELL MORE IN THE SOUTH'S No. 1 State! You rfoofc Mark* With ■ Affi iate _S> HOWt WRH\SHIHGS SUB in Recent official Hooper Ratings show WSJS, the Journal-Sentinel Station, FIRST in the morning — FIRST in the afternoon— FIRST in the evening! For the finest in AM-FM coverage, it's WSJS in Winston-Salem. Represented by: HEAOLEY-REED CO. "S UWSTOH-SU-6* ,953 Survey °* crew tabulates each dealer's batch of cards. I These generally reflect an average of about 859? 0I n's total volume for the week.) From this large sample the agency is able to extract in terms of percentage the specific number of sales attributable to each medium. For example, if 400 cards are received from a given store in a given week, they represent 400 sales. One hundred fifty or 37.5';. may be from TV, 100 or 25% from radio, 100 or 25% from newspapers and 50 or 12.5% from other sources. These percentages, which reflect a specific percent of the store's total sales for the particular week, are then applied to its known total dollar volume. If the store's volume were $10,000, the work sheet would attribute 37.5% or $3,750 to TV for that week. I This is possible because the average unit sale does not varj appreciably from week to week). That figure divided by the store's TV expenditure for the week indicates the dollar return of the medium. The same calculation is made each week for each store and each medium. The most valuable figure in all these calculations, of course, is the last one — sales per dollar of advertising. The agency does not consider this figure an absolute measure of results but uses it as a comparative index. As the figure fluctuates from week to week, the agency is able to determine how each medium is gaining or losing in effectiveness compared with the others. By watching this comparison vigilantly week after week, the agency can make periodic adjustments in schedules. The net effect of this constant refining process is to keep the stores' ad budgets at maximum efficiencv and their percentage cost of advertising down. All the data from the work sheet is transferred to a memo form, which is mailed to each dealer weekly. By this method the dealer is kept constantly informed as to what his advertising dollar is doing for him and advised of possible changes in media strategy which the agency is considering a* a result of its evaluation. In addition to providing this up-to Ifoir Mogul gets paid Emit Mogul & Co. gets a percentage of sales rather than a straight 15% commission from Rayco. This controversial issue is of such interest that SPONSOR will run a debate on it in the near future. 108 SPONSOR