Maxwell House. Don’t waste time on problem babies Most marketers spend too much time worrying about how to revive products which are in trouble, and too little time worrying about how to make successful products even more successful. It is the mark of a brave man to admit defeat, cut his loss, and move on. Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers. Don’t dawdle Most young men in big corporations behave as if profit were not a function of time. When Jerry Lambert scored his breakthrough with Listerine, he speeded up the whole process of marketing by dividing time into months. He reviewed progress every 30 days, with the result that he made a fortune in record time. Promotions In 1981, US manufacturers spent 60 per cent more on promotions than on advertising, and distributed 1,024,000,000,000 coupons. Bloody fools. In the long run, the manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined image for his product gets the largest share of the market. The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off his advertising dollars for short-term promotions. Year after year I find myself warning clients about what will happen to their brands if they spend so much on promotion that there is no money left for advertising. Price-off deals and other such hypodermics find favor with sales managers, but their effect is ephemeral, and they can be habit-forming. Said Bev Murphy, who invented Nielsen’s technique for measuring consumer purchases and later became President of Campbell Soup Company: ‘Sales are a function of product-value and advertising. Promotions cannot produce more than a temporary kink in the sales curve.’ Says Dr. Ehrenberg: ‘A cut-price offer can induce people to try a brand, but they return to their habitual brands as if nothing had