The Giveaways

The hottest form of advertising promotion is the giveaway. This year U.S. businesses will hand out $16 million worth of appliances, cars, cameras and bric-a-brac on 22 network shows seen by most of the nation's 43 million TV homes, and 250 local radio and TV programs. So popular are the shows that this week CBS and NBC each will add three new TV giveaway programs. NBC and ABC will start two more later in July.

Giveaway games are probably the cheapest form of TV publicity, since the manufacturer swaps merchandise--often low-priced items--for screen time. Ohio's Tappan Co. gives away $230,000 worth of ranges yearly, figures a giveaway plug costs only .0042-c- per 1,000 viewers, far less than a regular TV commercial. But there is hot debate over how many sales are actually created by the giveaways. Says Bell & Howell, which passes out $17,000 worth of movie projectors a year, mostly on This Is Your Life: "We like the idea, but we find it hard to determine how much we really get out of it."

What Sells? Ronson Corp. hands out about $150,000 worth of lighters and shavers yearly on TV, figures it gets about $600,000 worth of screen time, which it feels ultimately boosts sales just as regular TV commercials do. Longines-Wittnauer believes that awarding its watches on TV greatly enhances their value: "People may not rush right out and buy, but over the year it pays off." RCA Victor, Polaroid Corp. and Ford's Lincoln-Mercury found that traffic jumped appreciably in their showrooms and stores after a single showing on NBC's The Price Is Right, one of the fastest-rising shows on television.

Of all the programs, The Price probably gives the biggest payoff in sales because it reveals the prices of its prizes, also gives them several plugs, each with a camera shot and description. Furthermore, The Price allows its 30 million night-time viewers to bid for a $15,000-$40,000 giveaway "showcase" of merchandise (the nearest estimate of the total retail value, without going over, wins it all). Last week 7,000,000 postcards poured into The Price, each marked with an estimate of the showcase's value. That meant many a viewer had gone to local dealers, at least to ask the price.

What Fails? Philco Corp. is snowed under with price queries after a spot on The Price, calls the show "a genuine free commercial." But Philco believes there is almost no value to lesser shows, in which the winner gets a staggering list of prizes, the product itself gets only a quickie mention, and the viewer gets only a flash look. Furthermore, to break onto one of these shows, a company often has to make an under-the-table payoff in cash or merchandise to the show's producer or to a middleman.

Sunbeam gave up such giveaways because "they don't do much good." Motorola shuns them because they tend to cheapen the product. Lanvin Parfums

President Edouard Cournand holds that "if you give away too much too often, it loses its value." The Evans Case Co. recently scratched its giveaways of handbags, which had hit $25,000 a year on such matinee tearjerkers as Queen For a Day and The Big Payoff, because "we never traced a single sale to the TV giveaways." General Electric also is cool to giveaways. Reasons G.E.: "Viewers may be encouraged to try to win a product rather than go out and buy it."

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