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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Stanton:

Well, in the first place if you go back far enough in time, there were some advertisers who didn't know what their competitors were doing. Not a very forward looking advertiser -- nevertheless, there were some advertisers who didn't know that their competitors were already experimenting with radio in the thirties. So we took them by the hand and tried to show them what their competitors were doing, or what other advertisers were doing in different fields to take advantage of what radio could do by way of spreading the message. That was a rather primitive stage of service, but nevertheless it was important.

It was much more critical to be able to take the advertisers' distribution and show it on a map -- and by distribution I mean learning something about where his products were being distributed, and then laying on top of that a map of the signal areas that we could supply -- And likewise showing the advertiser where he didn't have distribution where we had coverage and where, literally, the advertising program gets the customers to go in and ask for the product. And if the store didn't stock it, ask the local distributor for it, and that quickly got back to headquarters: that there was demand for something in Dayton, Ohio that the particular retailer didn't have. If we could demonstrate that to the advertiser, and say to him, “Your magazine and newspaper advertising aren't getting to these markets. Or, if they're getting to them, they're not being effective.” By showing the pulling power of radio advertising, it helped make the sale. And of course once an advertiser was considering radio advertising -- I almost said television -- once the advertiser was considering radio, then it was the Research Department's job to provide a map to the advertising agency showing what the potential coverage would be. Because some advertisers didn't have national distribution.

Q:

So, did you solicit advertisers then as well as -- How did the relationship work in terms of





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