Army of 40 marketing men make Negro buyers more brand-conscious - Brief Article

Expanding U.S. business in the postwar era was ready to knock on any door for customers and did. Anxious to recoup for markets lost in war-ravaged Europe, America's merchandising magnates turned a jaded glance to home buyers and heard the jingle of coin along the nation's newest selling frontier--the undeveloped market of 14 million Negroes with pockets full of boomtime wages.

Long untouched and untapped by industry, the virgin market looked like a lush, lucrative gold mine to color-wise, sales-hungry prospectors, but in their initial diggings into the "strike" they soon discovered it took unconventional methods to hit pay dirt. And before long they were calling for the aid of a forceful newcomer on the American sales scene--the Black "sales associate" whose job it was to establish contact between the 99 percent of the country's manufacturers who are non-Negro and the 10 percent of the consuming population that is Negro. In a little more than a decade they have scored spectacular successes in changing the selling habits of many of the country's leading consumer-goods companies and the buying habits of the colored common man from Lenox to Central Avenues.

Starting as a one-man army back in 1934 when ex-theatrical press agent James A. "Billboard" Jackson went on the Standard Oil payroll, these Black sales associates have grown into a field force of some 40 public relations and sales representatives who flit about the nation promoting their products in colored communities (biggest staff: 11 working for Pabst beer). The biggest soap, oil, whiskey and office equipment companies in the country all have special Negro sales promotions today. Working against trying handicaps of the past--prejudiced executives, lack of adequate marketing research, low standards of Negro newspaper advertising columns, Negro suspicion of high pressure tactics--these business pioneers have nevertheless succeeded in transforming Negro Americans into the most brand-conscious buyers in the nation.

With the ice broken in some of the top firms in the nation and results tabulated in actual sales, the Black sales associates find many of their worst difficulties fading. Perhaps their best ally has been a general trend towards more interracial good will in America but more specifically too, economics has worked on their side. Today, the Negro is a good customer and when he buys a bar of Swan soap, a box of sulpha pills or a bottle of Three Feathers whiskey, Lever Brothers, Abbott Laboratories and Schenley count the profits in the cash register regardless of the customer's color.

To get to this market, dozens of firms have turned to Negro representatives and publications as the most effective sales media. The two have gone hand-in-hand in campaigns to stamp names like Pepsi-Cola, Chesterfield, Seagram's and Vaseline on the mind of the masses. With race-consciousness a powerful factor in all Negro buying, advertising in colored newspapers and magazines has always more than paid its way.

The Black sales associates have taken great pains to impress their bosses with this indisputable sales factor and despite much executive resistance to advertising in the Negro press. Today's ad lineage is double that of the prosperity years of the 1920s when advertisers included Chevrolet, Lifebuoy soap and White Owl cigars.

New accounts which have stepped into the breach have more than made up for losses from the days of the '20s and these newcomers have learned quickly that results come fast in the Negro market. Negro marketmen always like to cite two good examples: Pabst beer soared from fourth to first place in Harlem sales one year after promoter William B. Graham started pushing Blue Ribbon in uptown taverns and liquor stores.

Chesterfield hopped from fourth to first place in sales in Harlem and on Chicago's South Side after they started running copy using an endorsement by heavyweight champion Joe Louis.