Sponsor (Jan-June 1956)

Max Factor had the $114,000 answei With 29% increase in sales volume after first full year of spot television, cosn \ IV rts id. raJ *de it 9 Months' Earnings Up 34% as Sales Increase 29% Max Factor & Co. reported yesterday that sales in the ninemonth period ended Sept. 30 rose 29 per cent over the same period last year, while epwings were 34 per cent higher. The result, according' to Max Factor Jr., president of the Hollywood cosmetic concern, was the best nine months in the company's history. Net earnings, after am^Hizatic ' of goodwill amotr to abl the wr U i ing po 3 HI' 2 W 0 network television show to call your own. No glamorous star to sell for you. No regular, well-known time slot for people to remember. And, to top it all. one of your competitors has not only all of these, but the show of the season. But the only payoff as far as Max Factor and its agency. Doyle. Dane Bernbach. are concerned, is the results. Do they come in the store next morning and ask for the product? Answer: See above clipping. After one year of television. Factors sales increased 29$ • It was. in fact, the biggest increase in the firms history. And the firm expects the years total sales to top $29-million. Coincidence? Says Ned Doyle, exec vice president of DDB: "We haven't seen figures for the final quarter yet. but it seems 1955 will turn out to be a year in which Factor showed substantial gains in its staple items. And those are the ones we featured on tv dav in-dav out." Further proof that client and agency credit tv with this happy development is the heft) hike television is getting in the 1956 budget: a 30% increase from SI. 5 million in 1955 tc over $2 million this year. That's more than 50% of the over-all appropriation of S3. 5 million. 30 How will the\ spend it? Before last year the cosmetic manufacturer had given tv only a trial whirl with a campaign for "Erace," a product to conceal blemishes, dark shadows and aging lines. At the same time a heavy newspaper schedule plus a spread in Life were used. Results were so convincing, says Account Executive Ed Russell, they decided to add television for the entire line. (Until January. 1955 DDB shared the Max Factor account with Young & Rubicam, the latter handling "Creme Puff" and ''Pancake.") At this point the crucial question arose: spot or program? Says Do\le: "Factor hadn't been on tv to any extent. But we'd seen Revlon flop four times with a network show before $64,000 Question, and I understand that Charles Revson had made up his mind that Question would be his last try. Also. Hazel Bishop had very little luck with spectaculars. "On the other hand, we had been successful with whatever spot tv Ave used. "When \ ou get down to it. the one argument for sponsoring a network show is that the dealers like it. Well, that's not necessarily true. The only time the dealers go for network — or any other kind of advertising, for that matter — is when it brings in the business. "We decided to go all out for spot." I Ed. Note: Of recent interest was a pre-Christmas report datelined Salt Lake City, published in Women's Wear Daily: "Buyers give tv advertising a nice pat on the back and sav response to several programs and to individual spots just starting to show here was felt almost immediately. Programs mentioned were Revlon's $64,000 Question, the Hazel Bishop program. Max Factor's short commercials, and Chance of a Lifetime") Basic plan, to be repeated this \ ear. is a y ear-around schedule in the top 07 markets. These markets will include all the major metropolitan areas, with a minimum of three or four announcements I minutes and 20's I per week in each. Preferred time is early evening from 7:30 to 10:00 — which will get 75% of the schedule I second choice, if these slots are unavailable, is the 10:00-10:30 p.m. period). The remaining 25' ', will be spread out during the afternoon. Career girls and young housewives, it is felt, are easiest to reach alter the day's big chores are done but before they settle into their late evening routine or whatever it is they settle into. Morning, it is thought, gets "ear" time but not enough "eye"' time and, of course, it's evening for the men's line. Buying pattern: The goal is 100 rating points in each market. That may mean three announcements in one mar Founder Max Factor Sr. and one of his early motion picture subjects, Joan Crawford