Pat Weaver, you have not heard of him (maybe his daughter).  But if you are a small business and have ever run an ad on TV or Radio you have him to thank.  Pat created a new business model that changed everything.  He did this by looking outside his industry and learning from others.  And this ain’t science fiction.  That a clue by the way.

David Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is... Well it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So, here's one of those.

[Armadura Ad]

David Young:

Steven, you wanted to tell the story of Pat Weaver today. Tell me about Pat Weaver.

Stephen:

Well, we're going to take a little departure because Pat Weaver's not a business and Pat Weaver was not an entrepreneur, but the interesting thing is, sometimes people come along, even inside corporate environments, where they change entire industries and build new business models. And there's something to be learned about those insights. So, Pat Weaver worked at one of the big advertising agencies. He worked at Y&R, Young & Rubicam. And in 1949, he headed over to NBC. So you got to remember, in 1949, that was the very, very, very early days of television.

David Young:

Yeah.

Stephen:

Yeah. Like, really early days of television, and how television used to operate back in those days was they actually used the model that radio ran on, which is even the model that radio doesn't even use anymore. But they looked at themselves [inaudible 00:02:22] said, "Well, we're a broadcast media, so we're like radio, so we're going to operate like radio," and how that happened was, the advertising agencies would actually create a show.

Stephen:

So the agencies created a show, went out and found a sponsor for the show, so you create the show, and then you would go out to Ivory Soap. Then you [inaudible 00:02:42] , "This is a great show for Ivory Soap," and Ivory Soap would say, "Great, we're going to sponsor it." Then you would go to the television station, or the radio station, and go, "Here's money to broadcast the show. Here's when we want the show broadcast."

Stephen:

So the television station was, "Great. We just make money for broadcasting this," and this is how the whole thing worked. It became a hot mess in a lot of ways, because the most popular shows weren't airing in primetime. What aired in primetime is who had the biggest bag of cash.

David Young:

Right.

Stephen:

Right? Biggest bag of cash ends up going on. And then the other problem with it is only big advertisers could afford to do this. All the little guys were all shut out of radio. We're all shut out of television, because you had to be able to sponsor the creation of a show.

David Young:

And they're blocking out entire blocks of time.

Stephen:

Blocking out entire blocks [inaudible 00:03:35].

David Young:

Right? There's not two or three spot breaks in a half-hour show, all of a sudden it's the Ivory Soap hour or half-hour. And that's it.

Stephen:

And that's the reason why I picked that one, is that's why they call them soap operas.

David Young:

Right!

Stephen:

These shows were created and were all sponsored by soap companies. So that's why they're referred to as soap operas. But the thing that's crazy about it is, you think about... There's no recording, no PVRs, no VCRs, none of that stuff. And the most popular show might be being shown at one o'clock in the afternoon, because the sponsor for that show doesn't have a lot of bucks.

David Young:

So what did Pat Weaver do?

Stephen:

So what Pat Weaver did is something we often talk about doi...