Sponsor (May-Aug 1957)

manager and he added his suggestion^, particularly where the marketing analysis was concerned. Then client, account executive and marketing man worked together to pick a dozen or so potential test markets from which the final two were to be chosen by media. "We would have help of! on getting availabilities from reps even if we had determined the test markets by then," Kemp told SPONSOR. "In a test campaign particularly it's verj important to keep the competition from knowing about it, since they could have come into those markets and thrown off all our findings for Product X." \\ hile the media department worked further on determining ways to give the test market campaign the same weight as the eventual national campaign I particularly since national plans called for heavy daytime network tv), the marketing man went to work on criteria for the test markets. He considered a number of aspects about the market: • It had to be representative of the total market. • It had to have an adequate client ARTICLE IN BRIEF SPONSOR traces development of marketing strategy and introductory tv campaign for an actual new Compton product to show how marketing relates to other agency services. Marketing takes Product X from client lab into stores and advertising promotes sales. sales force covering the territory . • This sales force had to be relative!) unburdened with problems on other products to be able to handle the extra work involving Product X's introduction. • The city had to be measurable (one in which there were no cross shipments because the major conclusions of the campaign were to be drawn from a tracing of shipments!. That way the client would control the number of cases per 1,000 population before, during and after the advertising effort. "The media department gets into the selection of test markets mainly on the basis of a veto power," says Kemp. "The picking of the dozen or so was actually done by the client sales department and our marketing people." Responsibility of marketing executives is to the account executives and top management. Conferring with Compton president Bart Cummings < at de*k i are (1. to r. > Bill Nevin, market development v.p.; Bill Stewart, acct. superv. : < '.. James Fleming, exec, v.p.; John Cross, acct. exec. Major market decisions may involve top management 32 Media had to pick two markets from a dozen presented to them by the account executive. Testing is generally done in two or more markets as a safeguard against competitive couponing in one as the result of a leak. For the Product X campaign, media looked for a market with two or more tv stations so that the campaign would be a fair test of media buy ing and have normal media competition. "The next problem," Kemp told SPONSOR, "was to duplicate network daytime tv locally. What we decided to do was to cut Product X into the clients existing network tv show-. which the product was destined to share in eventually anyhow. If we hadn't found markets where this was possible, we might have had to buv local daytime programing of comparable ratings weight as network." Once the dates for the sampling campaign and the advertising were determined, media went in to shop for time, but as close to the starting date as possible "without jeopardizing our spot buying possibilities." The test campaign for Product X I Please turn to page 86) DO SPONSORS NEED AGENCY MARKETING? sponsor has been checking admen for the answer, including agencies at the 4A's, Compton for this story, others over recent months. What their thinking boils doun to: 1. Impartial, rather than company-inbred, thinking in marketing provokes more incisive planning in today's competitive markets. Sophisticated, giant air advertisers use agency marketing counsel, like advertising developed in marketing framework. 2. Marketing as an additional agency service helps maintain the balance between commissions paid to the agency and services rendered. There's great flexibility in this area of client-agency relations, depending upon profitability of the account. 3. Clients themselves have become more marketing-conscious, and the trend toward product-manager organization within client offices has broadened client admen's responsibilities to marketing, sales, production know-how as well as advertising. SPONSOR 11 MAY 1957