The talking machine world (Jan-June 1928)

130 The Talking Machine World, New York, June, 1928 Philco Prepares Big Sales and Ad Campaign for New Receivers Philadelphia Storage Battery Co. Making Elaborate Preparations to Introduce Line of Radio Receivers — Advertising in National Publications and Newspapers The entry of Philco into the field of set manufacturing, as announced last month, is an outstanding example of the minute care that the modern manufacturer is giving to every detail prior to the advent of the set. The Philadelphia Storage Battery Co., Philadelphia, Pa., has had the Philco set in the period of laboratory development for three years, during which Philco engineers and research experts were constantly at work perfecting the instrument. Philco had held for some years patents covering rectification, power control and other radio set features, and operates also under patents of RCA, General Electric, Westinghouse, American Telephone and Telegraph, Latour Corp., Lowell & Dunmore, Hogan and Hazeltine Corp. This set comes along with the best ideas in all, plus its own innovations. Philco next set forth to market its receivingset in a bold and novel manner. The sales and advertising campaign prepared is on a mammoth scale. Advertising and selling will be supported by a system of educating jobbers and dealers in their problems of financing, keeping books, installing service departments and other merchandising and storekeeping policies. There will be co-operation with resale units to a degree stated to be novel in the radio business. Philco will maintain a firm furniture policy, withholding its guarantee from any sets sold apart from their combination with Philco cabinets. Territorial rights will be jealously protected. The responsible attitude of Philco in regard to its former products will be as assiduously assumed in the marketing of its radio set. It will protect and assist. Philco advertising will consist of a big national magazine campaign, using such outstanding publications as the Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, Ladies' Home Journal, American Weekly, etc. The greater part of a huge appropriation, however, will be spent on newspapers throughout the United States. Hundreds of publications will be used and large copy run. The appropriation for newspapers alone will total hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single month. There will be a direct-mail campaign carried on continuously, with elaborate dealer helps — window displays, counter cards, posters, etc. — supported by forceful selling and advertising methods for individual dealers. Philco in all these will aim to set a new pace in radio merchandising. A large volume of trade paper advertising will be used, and this, too, is planned to take an unusual and daring form. Exhibitions similar to the ones at the convention of the. National Electric Light Association in Atlantic City and the Radio Trade Exposition in Chicago will be made all over the country. Philco's sales campaign promises to be an aggressive one, in keeping with the past record of the company. Sayre M. Ramsdell, promotion manager, outlines it thus: "We have an instrument whose performance in the matter of tone and distance is astonishing even to us. With the confidence our product gives us we are out to establish a record in a campaign which will employ more than 1,000 men in the field selling Philco sets, and more than 150 servicing them. We will have traveling auditors and accountants. We not only are going to give jobbers and dealers the most intensive selling co-operation ever given in the history of radio, but we are going to give them the most complete servicing co-operation they ever have had in connection with radio. "We are putting a staff of seventy-five expert traveling auditors and accountants at their disposal so they can merchandise and service Philco sets in the most efficient manner. We show them how to keep their books, handle time payments and a multitude of other details, so that the most generous kind of service can be given the retail customer, and the surest profits obtained for themselves. We are going to try with all our might to keep the business clean and free from demoralizing price cutting. And we are going to do our level best to make radio an all-the-year-round business and not merely a seasonal matter." Los Angeles Trade Interest Centers on the Music Pageant Exposition Month Attracts Trade — Victor Co. to Exhibit $6,000 Electrola Victrola Edward C. Hayes Sales Manager of Fitzgerald Music Co. Phonograph Section Los Angeles, Cal., June 2. — George E. Morton, Southern California representative of the Victor Talking Machine Co., left this week to attend the Victor Co.'s salesmen's convention, which will take place this month in Camden, J. M. Spain, Southern California manager of the California Victor Distributing Co., also plans to attend the convention. Edward C. Hayes has been appointed sales manager of the phonograph and radio departments' of the Fitzgerald Music Co. Mr. Hayes was for some time in charge of the phonograph and radio departments of Bullock's; he was recently in the wholesale sales department of Ray Thomas, Inc., distributors of Atwater Kent on the Coast. W. S. Van Doran has been put in charge of the phonograph and radio departments of the Table Type CLAROSTAT Simple device of a thousand uses for any radio set — factory-built, custom-built, homemade. Instantly applied without use of tools or knowledge of radio. Ideal for controlling volume, tone, sensitivity, selectivity, regeneration, stabilization and other functions. Handsomely finished in bronze and nickel, with felt base, connecting cord and block. Packed in attractive carton with exceptional instruction sheet for nontechnical broadcast listener. Sells on sight —at $2.50 list. Sales Tonic! Yes, just that. When sales are dull, people spend cautiously, money is tight — let radio accessories keep the pot boiling. And here are two of the best sellers today: Antenna Plug CLAROSTAT Something really new in antenna plugs. Makes any electric light socket or outlet an ideal antenna, eliminating trouble and expense of usual installation. Improved coupling condenser employed, together with detachable plug and long connecting cord. Works anywhere and with any set. Provides antenna for new set you install, or better results for old set now equipped with antenna or loop. A cure for "dead spots." A boom in summer. In attractive carton, with understandable instructions — $1.50 list. Ask your jobber about these sure-shot items, as well as other Clarostat products. Or better still, write us for literature and attractive sales proposition. American Mechanical Laboratories, Inc. Specialists in Variable Resistors 285-287 NORTH SIXTH STREET BROOKLYN, N. Y. Southern California Music Co. He has had considerable retail experience in both departments in the past and has been with the Southern California Music Co. for the past six months or more. The Victor Talking Machine Company is sending its famous $6,000 Electrola Victrola, which created so much notice and praise a few months ago, for exhibition in the International Pageant of Music and Exposition to be held here from June 18 to 30. Five stages of tableaux, scenes and pageantry will be in operation at the Industrial Pageant of Music and Exposition June 18 to 30 at the Ambassador Auditorium. One will be over the Victor Talking Machine Co.'s exhibit, which is ornamented in East India architecture. Another will be over the Brunswick Co.'s Egyptian architecture booth. A third will be over the main entrance and the other two over the Birkel Music Co.'s Italian style exhibition booth and that of the Fitzgerald Music Co.'s and Martin Music Co.'s French Norman type of architecture, respectively. C. R. Bowen has been appointed sales manager of the phonograph and radio departments of the Piatt Music Co., with Fred A. Kahn as assistant sales manager. Wide Observance of Music Week on Coast CLAROSTAT <r San Francisco, Cal., June 5. — The music and radio trades contributed greatly to the success of Music Week, which received a more widespread observance than ever before. The committee members included J. Emmet Hayden, acting chairman; Chester W. Rosenkrans, executive director; E. J. Delano, of Sherman, Clay & Co., headed the committee on band contests; Henrik Gjerdrum, president of the Music Teachers' Association, took care of the programs in civic and social clubs. The Atwater Kent program, which included a galaxy of outstanding artists, was received with great acclaim on the Pacific Coast, and dealers featured the gala program in displays and in newspaper advertising. Interest in Music Week has been mounting steadily.