U. S. Radio (Jan-Dec 1961)

FOODS: RADIO'S $76 BILLION QUESTION Continued from jxige CARLOADS OF FOOD Continued from page 16 empt) half-gallon cartons of Oak Grove s 11 mice milk. U&I Sugar Co., which took pari in a KCPX Salt Lake City campaign, had a return of empty sugai sa< ks which represented purchases ol 175 tons (over 47 railroad carloads) in 13 weeks. Such records have become almost iiiiiinm!i|i|;i(c to Conmiunitx Club Awards ol Westport, Conn., and its participating stations and advertisers. Says |olm C. Gilmore, president oi CCA (which has recentb expanded beyond the V. S. to radio campaigns in Can. ul. i. Australia and Puerto Rico), "CCA has already tinned about six million American housewives into garbage collectors." A CCA campaign is a cooperative venture between that organization, a local radio station, local merchants, national and regional advertisers, and members of the local women's c lubs. Men hants and advertisers sign it]) for radio time on a local station at slight 1\ premium rates for a campaign of 13 to 16 weeks. The CCA diiec toi lor the station holds a "kickoft'* party in the local hotel for representatives of the community's various women's groups, and the promolion gels under way. Clash money prizes (ranging up to 810,000, depending on the si/e of the market) are offered to the clubs whose members turn in the most substantial piles of "proof-of-pui chase" on arti( lis sold by the participating advertisers and retailers. In its first five years, more than $3 million in prizes was awarded during some 500 campaigns in over 200 markets. Food retailers took part in about 75% of these campaigns. This fall, CCA expects to have campaigns on about 130 stations. Among the national and regional food advertisers who use CCA are: Sealtest, Ralston-Purina, Hormel, Stokelv-Van Camp, Quality Bakers, Swift, My-T-Fine, Gold Medal Flour, Tetley Tea. Folger's Coffee, Pet Milk, IXL Foods, Donald Duck Frozen Juices, Buitoni Macaroni, Chock Full O' Nuts Coffee, Lever Bros., Fritos, Breast Of Chicken Tuna, H. J. Heintz Co., Oscar Mayer Meats, Sesame Chips, Holsum Bread, Lay's Potato Chips, Borden, plus most major soft drinks. ■ "What are the necessary ingredients ol such a lood campaign?" Barborka continued. "An exciting commercial thai is li. uncd in the proper time peiiods and programing in order to pinpoint the chief purchasers and consumers of the particulai item in question. In the case ol cereals, of course, the house wife is the chiel purchaser and the moppets and teeners the main consume] s "Radio's additional ability to take a major lood campaign and dramatize it both on the air and oil through local promotion and follow-through makes it one of the soundest media buys." Both these developments suggest what will have to be done before radio comes into its deserved share of lood advei tising billings: (1) Radio must sell itself harder— at both the local and national levels to food clients through more research and documentation. (2) Food advertisers must reevaluate their media-buying with a closer look at radio and its advantages—especially in the area of economical image building. The retailing of food has undergone many changes since the da\ in 1930 when a grocery worker named Mike Cullen rented an abandoned garage in Jamaica, Long Island, advertised himself to a depression-conscious New York as "King Kullen, the World's Greatest Price Wrecker," and introduced the self-service supermarket concept. By 1936, there were 1,200 such self-service markets in the U.S. Today, there are some 23,000 markets which do $500,000 or more annually. Some 2,200 of these supermarkets were added last year despite the general economic slump. This year, trade publication Chain Store Age estimates 2,300 more will open, about 1,000 of them in the big suburban shopping centers. With the boom of the shopping centers in areas well beyond the metropolitan limits, some food people are beginning to wonder if their old reliance on newspapers for advertising is sound. Studies show that metro papers are not following the suburban population drift, but that air media are. The supermarket explosion has mutated the whole lood pic line. Where the old cornet gioceiv of another era used to stock about 500 or 600 products, today's supermarkets stock 6,000 to 8,000 items. Even the cities' "bantam" stores (usually controlled by a supermarket chain) stock 1,000 or more items. Paul S. Willis, presidenl of the Grocery Manufacturers Assoc., foresees the larger supermarkets of the end of this decade "carrying some 12,000 items in stock, and half of them will be different from those sold today." The "independent" grocery, as grandpa knew it, is all but extinct. Now there are supermarkets, superettes and small (or bantam) stores— so classified on the basis ol their annual volume ($375,000 or more down to $75,000). They are generalh of two types: (1) Coops in which retailers control the warehouse and warehouse management, such as IGA; (2) Voluntaries where warehouses are controled— not by the retailer— but by an outside management which controls everything; this is the true chain such as an A&P. The public attitude to shopping also has been changed by the supermarket. A N.Y. Times article stated thai more people are exposed to supermarkets than to schools, c hurches or movies. "Once a week," the article said, "the housewife (or her husband) will go to a big regional, semi-department store kind of super, as far as 20 miles from home to do the major shopping; between times she will fill in at the nearest bantam." It has made the housewife an entirely different type of shopper than was her grandmother. The shopping list, for example, has all but disappeared. A recent survey revealed that only one in five women carry a detailed list of articles. "Supermarket buying is basically impulse buying," says Arthur D. Greason, president of Food Enterprises, Inc., a food brokerage firm in Rye, N.Y. "Advertising or packaging may help plant the impulse, but it won't have any effect unless the goods are prominently displayed in the supermarket. It's a constant 48 U. S. RADIO/August 1961