A great problem, this success business

Television advertising is the success story of our times. Not quite so highly publicised is the story of selling time successfully on television to advertisers and their agencies. Here director of sales, GUY PAINE, tells of some of the qualities needed by the sales executive of 1966.

 

There was an almost universal belief around at a point in time that will seem to historians of the future like some Stones-in-the-head Age, say ten years ago from now, that selling time on television was a simple, impossible job. The simplicity belief sprang from the popular conviction that selling in this context was all a matter of being a rather nice chap and a rather nice sort of chap, a bit polished around the elbows from leaning on bar counters but none the worse for that generally, a decent set of golf clubs and a thick skin. Impossible because the cost of television advertising was quite clearly (we all agreed, buyer and seller alike) just a tiny bit expensive considering that there were really no viewers, not even many sets to view on, from or at.

All quite clean and tidy, a normal British sort of situation bound to come out all right in the end because eventually the real truths begin to become clear to more than a very few. Take the sales executive first whom we all hope is still, under our revised and increasingly enlightened attitude, a rather nice chap because that is someone we would prefer to have around anyway and so presumably would the people with whom we do business. But if he has no brain, cannot think fast on his feet, understand the fundamentals of at least 10 major consumer industries and a lot more besides, he is not for us.

For the fact is that the obvious success of television as an advertising medium in the intervening years has paradoxically created more problems for the selling of it than have been solved. Alongside this, and springing in my view from the existence and growth of television, has been the essential requirement from industry to make more efficient their selling communication with the customer. Success, then, has created its own critical searchlight under which justifications in minutest areas of communication science are required to be as polished and susceptible to keen examination as no other medium. (Indeed I sometimes wonder if other media are thought to be in the same business.)

‘Efficiency’ appears in everyone’s speech/article/election address these days and is the one word over which no one is going to argue. The advent of television suddenly made the importance of this whole cost of communication the subject of detailed rethink. Television was communicating, it was costed at a certain figure, but how much was it worth?

So time selling became more than having a rate card and the last rating trends in your pocket. Industry and their advertising agencies required a lot more information and were prepared in many cases to go out and get it. We had to know that too and a bit more as well about our own medium that would give us an edge if we could find one. Now of course it is a buyers’ market as well, which most people accept as being a healthier situation for both sides.

The first essential to sell any television time is to have the audience watching your channel. Size by itself is not all that important in the final analysis and it is certainly true for example that in London, that most fickle (or discriminating, depending on how you look at it) audience is more difficult to please than in some other areas where regularly high ITV ratings are obtained. The attractiveness of our programme schedule in all its different facets is, therefore, fundamental to our business. At this point most of those who are not concerned with the sales operation would limit their awareness of what else happens to the existence of commercials on the screen.

We transmit approximately 25,000 commercials a year which come from 160 clients and they cover the whole range of consumer industries. Each of these industries is within itself a highly competitive assortment of marketing companies manufacturing products which are sold under retail conditions which are themselves increasing in efficiency and competitiveness year by year. It is absolutely clear that advertising by itself, even television advertising, will not sell a product that is not going to fulfil a need for the buyer and is not presented in a bright and attractive way and at a competitive price. If you can date in your mind the beginning of the revolution in retailing, packaging and product development that has taken place over the past few years you will find that it coincides pretty clearly with the first real impact of Independent Television 10 years ago. So the manufacturer must be improving his sales efficiency all the time and under that heading come the three vital ingredients of product, price and packaging, followed by good distribution, then comes television. If the first three ingredients are right television can help immensely with distribution. When distribution is achieved television’s impact with the audience will create that awareness of the product which is the final link. All very simple, but what are the qualities then needed for a time salesman? In the first instance he is fighting against other media, selling at what are thought to be fairly high rates and working in a system of audience measurement that measures the audience minute by minute throughout transmission hours whereas newspapers and magazines, if they bother at all, take a six month audit of their sales of copies (not people reading, not people actually seeing the advertisements on the pages, just copies sold). The television man must also know what the manufacturer is trying to achieve, to whom he is hoping to sell his product, e g. housewives, men, young mothers, everyone, etc. because our audience changes in character hour by hour. He must have an awareness of how a manufacturer’s particular product stands in the total market, whether he is the brand leader or number five in the market and whether the market itself is changing month by month, because this in itself can generate revenue for the programme company because the keener the competition the more chance there is for advertising activity to follow. He must have arguments to advance in favour of media advertising to the public rather than expenditure on premium offers, competitions, all those activities generally called below-the-line expenditure. They have a part to play in marketing but too much emphasis on these will detract from revenue to media as a whole and therefore us in particular.

He must in short be a marketing man and be in a position to talk to the manufacturer and to his agency in terms which they use and have the same ambition for their advertising as they have to make it more effective all the time.

A lot of television time will sell itself; that is in the nature of anything which is inherently the best. The importance to this company and to all others is to make sure that we obtain the top 30 per cent or 40 per cent of our business because this has to be fought for and makes all the difference to the company in terms of profitability. It is the sales department’s job to get it. Crikey!