Estimating The Audience Size (the Mirror Giveaway)
At a time when there were no TV ratings -- the A.C. Nielsen Company would not begin measuring TV ratings until 1950 -- Anacin aspirin decided to take a chance and sponsor the show. But this decision worried the advertising executives at Anacin, who thought that they might be wasting money by sponsoring a show with a sparse audience.
A simple, non-scientific scheme to gauge the size of the audience was hatched. During one commercial spot, Anacin offered a free pocket mirror to the first 200 viewers who wrote in requesting one. As a precaution, they purchased a total of 400 mirrors in case the audience was twice as large as they expected. Although the free mirror was offered only during that one spot, Anacin received nearly 9000 requests for mirrors.
Read more about this topic: Mary Kay And Johnny
Famous quotes containing the words estimating, audience, size and/or mirror:
“I am sure that in estimating every man’s value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man’s encounter with God is how he shall make the experience—which is both natural and supernatural—understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today’s audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“O hideous little bat, the size of snot,
With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes,”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“The creation of “strong-minded” women, so-called, is due to the individualism of men, to the modern selfish and speculative spirit which absorbs everything within itself and leaves women nothing but self-assertion for their protection and support.”
—“Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 44 (February 1870)