Boomlay Boom

Super-Showman Mike (Around the World in 80 Days) Todd turned up last week as a guest lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Todd's message: "Showmanship has left show business. Everywhere there are businessmen who are better showmen than we who say we're in show business." Though ex-Pitchman Todd is no man to tell a tip (crowd) what it does not wish to hear, there was no doubt that he had a point. As U.S. business gets bigger and more competitive, there is no business like showy business. To make even a small noise takes a big drum.

It also takes expensive beaters. To launch its golden-anniversary line of 1957 trucks, International Harvester spent $100,000 on a closed-circuit TV program beamed at pep-talk luncheons for 10,000 dealers in 48 cities of 32 states. Hired for $7,500, Commentator Edward R. Murrow emceed the show, used his Person to Person format to interview top Harvester officers about products and plans. To promote its Yellow Pages, American Telephone & Telegraph Co. a fortnight ago hired Cinemactor Walter Pidgeon to emcee a 59-city closed-circuit TV show for potential classified advertisers and member phone companies.

As a warmup for the press in 15 key cities for its April 23 NBC-TV musical starring Nanette Fabray, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. will put on a closed-circuit teaser the night before the big show.

Kicking off its annual spring promotion next week, Nieman-Marcus of Texas will spend more than $250,000 on lavish circus-theme extravaganzas for its stores in Dallas and Houston, will cover floors with sawdust, fill windows with monkeys, send clowns cavorting among customers. To publicize Eagle Food Centers, a grocery chain with 29 supermarkets in Iowa and neighboring states, Joe Louis was hired last week to demonstrate basic boxing blows in rings set up in the chain's parking lots, give inspirational talks to young customers, stressing right living and good (i.e., Eagle) eating. Ex-champ Louis will get about $1,000 per show, while Eagle gets one of the biggest drawing cards in U.S. history.

Other recent business drumbeats have seemed to emanate from out where the tall corn grows. Examples:

P: Culligan, Inc. of Northbrook, Ill. introduced a new water-softener appliance by setting up giant faucets with running water outside assembly halls at eight regional sales conventions. Inside each darkened hall, a single spotlight fell on a stage curtain which parted dramatically with an explosion and cloud of smoke to reveal the new gadget. The shows cost $35,000. But they were worth it. They netted $1,000,000 in orders.

P: Worthington Corp. announced its arrival in the Dallas market by sending 300 carrier pigeons to 300 leading builders and contractors. All came home to roost, nearly half bearing invitations for Worthington salesmen to call.

P: Chicago's Fifth Annual Merchandise Mart Floor-Covering Show hired a daring rigger to dress as a sultan, hover over the city on a linoleum "flying carpet" suspended from a helicopter. When fog and rain cut visibility, the sultan had to be dangled instead on a boom from the Mart's 353 ft. roof.

Nobody out-thinks ebullient President William Stuart of Chicago's Martin-Senour Paint Co. with ideas to jazz up annual sales meetings. One year Showman Stuart hired two muscular prizefighters to demonstrate the company's "sales knockout punch." Last year he dressed up as a maharaja, put on a safari act to show "salesmen out after bigger game." This year Stuart donned a white space suit, black cape, globelike helmet, gave his 75 Martin-Senour salesmen Ding-Ding-a-Ling beanies with propellers. As the beanied salesmen sat enraptured, Stuart leaped out of a model rocket ship in a puff of smoke, cried: "Why go into outer space? We still have lots of selling to do here on earth!"

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