How PCs are changing sales promotion; the personal computer is changing the way magazine promotion people do their jobs

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 1988 by Walter Jorz

How PCs are changing sales promotion

"What color do you want?" The computer asks brightly. And that is often the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Of course, research people have been infatuated with their machines for many years now, but sales support people on what they would term the creative side have moved less boldly toward the 21st century.

Nevertheless, those who have tried it love it. Writers discover a real relationship developing between themselves and their PCs. Unlike typewriters (or yellow pencils), computers do talk back, and they do indeed do quirky things, just like people. Macintosh programs, for instance, have a little cartoon-style bomb symbol that announces a malfunction in the system and blocks further access to the input material. The choices are to turn off the machine--and lose all the work not already saved on the floppy disk--or invent a way to fool the machine and gain re-entry. It is a battle of wits and wills.

But generally, writers report a marvelous superconductivity between their minds and the display screen. Ideas seem to flow with far less effort; one thinks rather than writes. And because changes are so easily made, there is more inclination to be dissatisfied with anything but exactly the right word. Typos disappear without a smudge. There are programs to do your proofreading for you. Even so, true computer hacks would regard all that as sinful underutilization of the computer's gifts--a little like testing Einstein on his multiplication tables.

Tom Troland, marketing director of Meredith's Country Home and Wood, is one of those with a really intimate relationship with his PC--an IBM-compatible Mitsubishi that perches on its pedestal above the hard disk drive on his worktable. The most useful programs, he says, "think the way creative people think."

It is Tom's Harvard Graphics program that asks him what color he wants for a headline on a presentation chart he is putting together--he has 16 shades on his palette. It also asks him which of six typefaces he wants to use, what mix of an infinite mix of type sizes, and how he wants his material to set up on the page. It allows him to insert photos and artwork in position with the aid of a laser scanner.

Statistically accurate and aesthetically interesting bar charts, pie charts and any other kind you can imagine are created on the disk and quickly "messengered" to a slide production house for transformation into 35mm transparencies. People linked by telephone modems get even quicker action. The whole process can take a day or less, and the cost is $8 to $12, compared to $100 or more for slides prepared in an art studio.

Board presentations are no more difficult, if a little more expensive, than slide pitches. Computerized material can be converted to 2" X 2" negatives and blown up in full-color "C" prints to standard 17" x 22" presentation card format. Cost is about $40 per board. And technological progress is bringing that cost down: New Canon color copiers produce "C" print quality copies (11" x 17" max) for $5 or less.

In the few hours it takes to get your slides or boards produced, you'll be writing the presentation script and getting hard copy arraying visual and script into the salesperson's hands for advance practice. A program feature called Practice Cards reduces the size of the visual material on the screen, allowing space for you to write the pitch that goes with the visual. Print it out and hand it to your salesperson. Same day delivery. That's service.

The computer can make you a live action video presentation, too. The Harvard Graphics program effortlessly adds motion to your static slides, letting you move from frame to frame with a mix of 10 different movements: dissolves, rolls, swipes, scrolls, rain, iris and more. For now, the material on your disk must be transferred to videotape for public viewing (and you can add sound), but eventually you'll be able to slip your disk into the PC to be found (by then) in every media buyer's cubicle.

With the help of a laser printer, the computer will do your leave-behinds too. For now, there's only black-and-white, but color is on the way. The material is repro quality.

Research options

Although so many magazine creative people are at a first-date stage with their computers, research people have been playing around for years. Even the smallest publishing companies are likely to house terminals hooked up to one of the on-line services, Telmar or IMS, that store syndicated audience data on their mainframe computers. What else could anyone need?

Alain Tessier, president of Mediamark Research (aka MRI), is of the opinion that we ain't seen nothin' yet. "Personal computers," he says, "have revolutionized the business of managing magazine data."

Both MRI and SMRB market complete packages of their data for PC use. MRI's is called MEMRI, for Micro Evaluation by MRI, and SMRB offers CHOICES. MEMRI has 85 clients with 115 magazines; CHOICES has 45 clients with installations at 66 sites.