Sponsor (July-Dec 1955)

TIMEBUYING BASICS cally from the time television started, the antennas on the houses in this place have increased and increased and increased. I don't think in the early days of television, at least, that anybody would claim an 87-mile coverage for a station in New York. The point that comes back on this particular thing is that if you go after a concentration of markets and try to knock off the big ones through either spot radio or spot television, you will be surprised at how few stations you can use to do it, because these stations reach out and cover other markets that are included in the 162 as well. The use of radio or television depends entirely upon the job you have to do. There should be no great struggle on the part of the media department in any agency to come up with an answer to it, and a lot of times the correct answer is a combination of the two. Any of you who have not been reading recent research on radio will do well to review it, because it is showing an amazing vitality for continued radio listening. There are certain suggestions that I would like to make to those who buy and to those who sell, especially for those people who are relatively new in the business. There is no black magic to buying or selling spot radio or spot television. It is a business. It is sound. Common sense prevails in the long run, and there is no sense in tilting at windmills or slanting off at a tangent. It is a matter-of-fact, precise business proposition. I think that it pays to study the markets, the concentration of populations, where the food and drug sales, or whatever categories you are interested in, are most highly concentrated. It is very important to keep posted on the stations, what stations there are in both spot radio and spot television that are available in each important market and the job they are doing, through their sales promotion. Any station that does not have a definite 52-week campaign of sales promotion direct to advertisers and advertising agencies is missing a bet. There are many ways to keep posted. Of course, you must follow developments through trade publications, but the thing to do is to keep abreast of what is going on as far as you can in every important market in the country. You should see the station managers when they are in town. Get first-hand reports, prejudiced as they will be. Sometimes you get two sides of the story and you can come up with the truth. Another thing that is rather important, especially in television, is to keep your Standard Rate and Data Service up to date on the supplement service, because the rates change every time you wink an eye. You don't want to get an estimate out to the client and find that the rates have increased overnight. Familiarity with network schedules is important, because when you are buying spot time, most generally, you are buying in relation to network programs and ratings, and a terribly important thing to learn is to interpret program ratings. I don't know how to tell you to do it, frankly. There are ratings and ratings, and ratings, and you just have to depend upon your native intelligence to pick out what you think is the correct answer. Don't be blinded by a difference of .2 per cent in a rating and throw the business to a station that is perhaps a bit better on a single availability. Once you have evaluated the stations and considered all the factors of the particular job to be done, be positive about it, say "this is the station that I want in the territory and I know the reasons in my mind why I want it." I am afraid a lot of timebuyers today try to lay a stack of mattresses to fall on in case somebody challenges their selection of a station. Once you have made up your mind, stick to it and be positive about it. As far as the selling end of it is concerned, there are a couple of suggestions here which I hope that you sellers will take in the spirit in which they are given. In calling on agencies and advertisers it is a very smart idea to try to make an appointment in advance, to have at least one important fact to present. Don't go in just to PAGE 28 cover the agency, and be able to turn in a report saying you saw Joe Zilch on such and such a day and "nothing doing" on that account. Have something important to present. Make your point and be brief. Recognize the pressure that the buyer or the advertiser is under. Sometimes you have to be most understanding, because even if you do make an appointment, it is broken by the time you get there. That is one of the occupational hazards of the advertising business. Don't think that the guy is trying to give you a run-around. If you are in a representative firm, be sure to expose your station managers to as many agencies and advertisers as possible on each visit. You don't have to take people out to lunch — but it's nice! If out-of-office presentations are made sometimes at a luncheon, try to time them accurately so that you meet the two p.m. curfew. After two it is an awfully short afternoon, and it is better for you and better for the advertiser or agency person. In the in-the-office presentation, you should call and ask for an appointment to set up a meeting of everybody concerned— account men, buyers — in the conference room. Present your story to as large a group as possible to conserve time. As far as the actual functioning on availabilities is concerned, there are improvements necessary there from the agency standpoint. I know what you are thinking, you sellers. You say that the agencies get availabilities and sleep on them for a week or two, and, of course, you must expect the station to sell, to get out from under as quickly as possible. There is a give and take there which I think you can work out with your agency and advertiser contracts. Try to push availabilities through as quickly as possible, train your stations to reply promptly and get the whole thing cleaned up and the confirmation out to the agency or advertiser in the shortest possible time. I don't know how many of you do it — I think some — but it is always appreciated if the confirmation not only confirms the time but confirms the exact rate of the service that is being bought. In conclusion, don't flood the agency with tears if you lose an order. You should have sold the station long before that particular order was placed. The station is not sold when an account is coming up to buy a schedule. If you ask the buyer to review the schedule for you for one or two or four specific markets, he might have to do the same thing for your competitor, and the net result is that the whole campaign would be opened up again. The timebuyer would have twice the work to do. And you might end up losing a few markets that you thought were set. Once the decision is reached, start selling for the next order, even if it isn't in sight. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q. Has any research been done to show if the law of diminishing returns sets in during one of these saturation campaigns? In other words, can you over-saturate to the point of reaction against a product? A. (From Kevin Sweeney) I will be honest. I haven't the vaguest idea. There is one agency in this town, a very large agency in the top 10 that I think knows as much about it as anybody, and they admit they know nothing. There's a campaign which I think most of you are familiar with, Maxwell House. You know the history of that one. It went from about 50, I believe, announcements up to as high as 800 and more announcements per week, and I don't think that either General Foods or Benton & Bowles really knows at what point saturation was reached. I think that they have made an attempt to find out. We have quite a lot of data based on department stores which shows a point of diminishing returns above 400 and some odd announcements for a specific one-time event. This is a point at which we don't seem to get much more reaction. But up to about 400 announcements in a two-day period we seem to get pretty good results. FRANK PELLEGRIN: I think the purpose of the first