Have you ever wondered why a major tire retailer would enter the business of selling Christmas records? Why Christmas records? Why not sell model blimps or cars and trucks with Goodyear tires? Who came up with the idea of Christmas records to sell tires? The answer is Stanley Arnold.
Who is Stanley Arnold? Stanley Arnold describes himself as an “idea man.” In his 1968 book published by Prentice-Hall, Tale of the Blue Horse and Other Million Dollar Adventures, he says, “I’m the president of a most unusual kind of business; one that earns more than a million dollars a year in fees bringing exciting ideas to almost three dozen blue-chip, blue-ribbon, blue blood corporations.”
“My formula for success is simple: I’ve built my entire career on putting carts before horses, and feeling before logic.” Feeling before logic….Christmas music for tire dealers….and so began the Goodyear “Great Songs of Christmas” record album series.
Who better to tell you the story of the “Great Songs of Christmas” than the man himself? The following is an excerpt from Mr. Arnold’s book that tells the story of the birth of these highly cherished holiday favorites.
“My professional career began in 1948 with a musical comedy that opened in New York in September of that fateful year at the old Adelphi Theater on Broadway. It was called ‘The Hilarities of 1948.’ I wrote the book as well as the lyrics for sixteen songs. The show’s cast included Morey Amsterdam and a live gorilla. I devastated the critics with my lyrical hilarities; in return they devastated my work.
“In ten days my first musical enterprise came to a cacophonous end after seventeen performances. It was an upsetting turn of events for the gorilla, who was just beginning to enjoy the glitter of showbiz, but the despairing sighs of a heartbroken, housebroken ape were no match for the cries of despair from the shows angels. ‘Hilarities of 1948” proved to be, however, an instructive interlude in the progress of my career because one of my songs, ‘Where in the World,’ turned out to be an incredible success that was published by seven different record companies, and actually netted me royalties from countries as remote as Czechoslovakia. This song was a transcendent work full of melodic lilt and lyrical moxie. It also happened to occupy the ‘flip side’ of another song by Rodgers and Hart with the cumbersome title of ‘Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.’ That year this skimpy Rodgers and Hart number turned out to be one of the twenty most popular tunes in the country. ‘Where in the World,’ a nifty creation in its own right, shared in its popularity. This taught me a valuable less — always associate with a winner. Ever since then I refined my ear further for the sound of success. Billion dollar corporations have a music all their own: the unmistakable sound of triumph. These were the companies that could implement my million dollar ideas. Together we would make the most beautiful music.
“Shortly after I started my million dollar idea company I was invited to attend a meeting at The American Tobacco Comany, where a serious problem was outlined to the assembled professionals on the selling of tobacco products. The subject of the meeting was a household name in the world of cigarette brands: Lucky Strike. To my astonishment, I learned that this celebrated brand of cigarettes had been travelling a downward sales path which would have to be halted soon or Lucky Strike would eventually fade away. To my great surprise, I learned that every day of every week of every month for many months, the sales of Lucky Strike had gone down. The pattern, as they say at research presentations, was clear. Something had to be done to reverse the trend. It was decided at the meeting that something would have to be done to stimulate the sale of Lucky Strike cartons which were purchased mostly in supermarkets. A good deal of research findings were reviewed at this meeting, such as the ‘demographic characteristics’ of Lucky Strike buyers, the ‘median income’ of Lucky Strike smokers, the ‘pattern of distribution’ of Luck Strike sales — but they all added up to a single word: help.
“I summarized the many points of the meeting in great detail at the upper right-hand corner of at three-by-five card. ‘LS in trouble,’ I noted, and returned to my office to reflect on the problem. All the way back to the office I kept humming the tune of the Lucky Stike television commercial that had been played at the meeting. ‘Remember how great’ was the name of the tune. (The selling theme that year was ‘Remember how great cigarettes used to taste? Luckies still do.’) Remember how great — it was a tune that was always on key even if sales of Luckies were off key. The answer came to me fast. I decided that music would reverse the sales decline of Lucky Strike.
“The following week, after allowing a respectable amount of time to elapse so that my client would feel that I had worked around the clock hammering out an answer, I brought my proposal to American Tobacco.
“People may be losing interest in Lucky Strike, I said, but they would never lose interest in music. Offer the public a record album of popular musical hits, I suggested — all-time hits like ‘St Louis Blues,’ played by an all-time great performer such as Louis Armstrong. Songs like ‘Stardust’ played by Eddie Duchin; ‘Mood Indigo’ by Duke Ellington; ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ sung by Mary Martin, and eight other numbers of this quality, all under the album title, ‘Remember How Great.’
“As I went through the list of performers who would appear on this record, I had to gulp several times because I began to wonder whether I would indeed be able to deliver on my promise. I had spoken to Columbia Records the day before and they had told me that they could most assuredly put together a ‘premium’ record (a record that is sold in conjunction with the purchase of a commercial product, such as a carton of cigarettes) with all the talent I was enumerating for my unbelieving clients at American Tobacco. But hearing myself reading the names, it sounded incredible. In addition to Louis Armstrong, Eddie Duchin, Duke Ellington and Mary Martin, I promised these names and titles as well:
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Count Basie ‘One O’Clock Jump’
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Les Brown ‘Sentimental Journey’
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Xavier Cugat ‘Brazil’
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Tommy Dorsey ‘I Dream of You’
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Harry James ‘Ciribiribin’
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Andre Kostelanetz ‘Night and Day’
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Dinah Shore ‘Buttons and Bows’
” ‘And not only would all this talent be offered on one record,’ I said. ‘You can obtain all this for a little less than a dollar, and you can sell it to the public for just one dollar. That’s still two dollars less than anyone would pay for a similar record in a regular record shop, and you would liquidate your entire costs.’
” ‘Very fascinating,’ said one of the marketing managers of American Tobacco, ‘but what does all this have to do with cigarette sales? I notice that you don’t even have the tune, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ on your list.’
” ‘You’ll see what this has to do with cigarette sales if you offer it as an American Tobacco exclusive,’ I said. ‘Offer it at the special rate of one dollar — only if purchased with a carton of Lucky Strikes. I bet you’ll even get non-smokers to buy Lucky cartons.’
“There are times when it is comforting to deal with a desperate client. He will even try music, if all else has failed.
“Lucky Strike decided to offer the record, ‘Remember How Great,’ in conjuction with the sale of cartons only. If the customer did not buy a Lucky Strike carton, ‘Remember How Great” could not be purchased either, even if the customer wanted to pay ten dollars for it. The big question that soon arose, however, was how to handle the proof of purchase — how the customer could prove to American Tobacco that a carton of Lucky Strike has actually been purchased. I proposed a simple, uncluttered solution.
” ‘Let’s ask the housewife simply to tear off the end flap of a Lucky Strike carton and mail it in with her one dollar,’ I suggested.
” ‘Not good enough,’ I was told. ‘People would go around tearing off our end flaps in supermarkets across the country without buying our cartons. We would liquidate a lot of records that way, but we sure wouldn’t sell many cartons.’
“I granted that there was always a small amount of finagling by customers in search of valuable premiums, such as our record, but I also pointed out that this is usually a miniscule percentage of the total number of purchases. I felt it was a worthwhile risk because the simple device of enclosing an end flap with a check for one dollar would be the easiest way to attract a maximum number of carton buyers to the record offer. I was at my businesslike best, but to little avail. American Tobacco was determined to obtain bona fide proof of purchase from every consumer who ordered ‘Remember How Great.’ They insisted that anyone who sent in a dollar to purchase this exclusive record would have to send in the wrapper of every pack of Lucky Strikes in the carton. In other words, if you wanted to obtain this record you would have to mail in a check or money order for one dollar, plus the empty wrappers of ten Lucky Strike packs.
” ‘Think of all the mail you’ll receive,’ I warned them. When I had finished presenting my cautious, measured, businesslike argument, I was told in the firmest tones by a senior officer at the meeting:
‘This is the way we’re going to do it.’ In its own way, that also had a musical ring to it. The note of determination was clear. The client was saying, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that was the way it was going to be.
“I will say in retrospect that I demonstated great acumen in going along with that resolve. A few weeks after the displays went up in supermarkets across the land offering ‘Remember How Great,’ an absolute avalanche of mail arrived at The American Tobacco Company. No less that two million three hundred thousand people from every corner of the United States had crammed ten empty wrappers of Lucky Strike packs along with checks and money orders for one dollar (many had enclosed actual dollar bills) into an envelope, and had mailed that formidable evidence to New York. No less than twenty-three million empty packs of Lucky Strike were sent in the mails! (It served me right for acting businesslike, reasonable, cautious, and measured. My client demonstrated to me what confidence in an idea really meant.)
“Shortly after the conclusion of this brief campaign, another review of the sales fortunes of Lucky Strike was held at the offices of American Tobacco, but on a far more happy note. For the first time since its downward trend the sales of Lucky Strike had actually begun to move in an upward direction. American Tobacco had sold more than two million records of popular music; but they had also sold more than two million cartons of cigarettes.
“It was a million dollar triumph for a million dollar idea. But it turned out to be only a curtain raiser for another musical idea that made American Tobacco’s triumphant experience look modest by comparison. Shortly after the successful conclusion to the Case of the Twenty-three Million Packs of Lucky Strike, I started a campaign to make the most beautiful music of my career for another billion dollar client, The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio.
“Winter, I knew, is a good season for selling tires. Just before Christmas, I also knew, is an exceptionally good time to sell tires. Moreover, I knew that Goodyear salesmen knew how to sell tires once they got people into their sixty thousand retail outlets across the country. Having witnessed the power of music to attact people to supermarkets to purchase cartons of Lucky Strike, I knew I was on to a million dollar device to bring people into these sixty thousand retail establishments. For every ten people that came into Goodyear stores, I knew that eight actually purchased tires or accessories. I was sure that music could be the pied piper to bring people into all those Goodyear outlets.
“Unfortunately, there is an easy tendency in the idea business to ‘marry’ an idea so closely to your client’s product that only the client likes the idea. The rest of the country is simply bored, and that can be a catastrophe. Records have been produced with titles almost as literal as ‘Music to Buy Tires By.’ I would never suggest a title like that to a client (unless the son of the board chairman composed the music). Nor is it logical to suggest a title like ‘Round and Round We Go’ or ‘Wheeling Along Together’ or other names of equivalent creative fire that may lift a client’s spirits on Monday while depressing his sales during the rest of the week.
“A subject that might appear, at least on the surface, to be completely unconnected to tires, is Christmas. Santa Claus never used a tire, but it occurred to me that Christmas had two deep connections with Goodyear. First, everyone is interested in Christmas; second, Goodyear sells many, many tires during the pre-Christmas season. That would be the million dollar idea for Goodyear, I decided: an album of Christmas music.
“A few weeks later I was on a plane to Akron to present an idea that no one at Goodyear asked for, that no one at Goodyear ever thought would succeed, that no one at Goodyear ever expected would become the greatest premium idea of the decade. I resolved that I would not take ‘no’ for an answer, because this idea would alter an industry.
“On an afternoon in March 1960, I proposed to the senior management group of The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, headed by Victor Holt, Goodyear’s executive vice president (he later became president), that they offer to the public during the weeks before Christmas a special premium record which would be called ‘The Great Songs of Christmas.’ It would not be a grab-bag of the usual kind of over-commercialized popular tunes so often associated with Christmas — songs like ‘I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus,’ ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ ‘White Christmas,’ ‘All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.’
“I suggested instead that Goodyear’s collection of Christmas music should consist of great songs, precisely as its title promised. ‘The Great Songs of Christmas’ should include timeless works performed by the world’s great musical artists. I suggested selections such as ‘Carol of the Bells’ sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir…’O Little Town of Bethlehem’ sung by Eileen Farrell…’Unto Us a Child is Born’ from Handel’s Messiah performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I presented a list of twelve selections that were so breath-taking in their scope, of such grandeur in their range of talent, that I crossed my fingers to be sure that my unbusinesslike staff had been sufficiently businesslike in promising these titles.
“After I had completed my presentation it was immediately apparent that Goodyear liked my lineup of music and the artists who would perform these timeless works. But the idea was too far removed for the small man carrying an enormous idea who had dropped into Akron, Ohio for the ostensible purpose of increasing the sales of Goodyear tires. It was presumptuous. It was unprecedented. Yet, it seemed to make sense. Goodyear’s management was torn between the great human appeal of my idea and the great corporate tendency to ‘think of the product.’
” ‘We’re not in the record business. We’re in the tire business,’ they said.
” ‘You’re in the people business,’ I countered. People have always been interested in Christmas music, I argued, but people had never been able to obtain so much magnificent Christmas music on one record. And if you want to bring people to your sixty thousand retail outlets, I continued, what better way than to offer them the world’s greatest Christmas songs at the world’s lowest price — just one dollar for the whole album.
“I had worked out an incredible arrangement with Columbia Records. They would assemble a collection of the greatest recording artists from Columbia’s roster of performers — and they would make this incomparable record available as an exclusive to Goodyear for less than a dollar. Goodyear could then liquidate whatever the record cost them by offering it to the public for just one dollar, provided they came to Goodyear outlets to obtain their record. Even if no one ever purchased a single tire, the record would not cost Goodyear a penny.
“After the initial shock of this proposal that was not related to tires, Goodyear began to warm up to the idea. I carefully shifted the conversation to the number of records that Goodyear should order to get the program started. I turned to Victor Holt and asked, ‘How many records do you think you ought to begin with the first year?’ I was already thinking in five-year units.
” ‘About thirty thousand,’ he said. ‘Do you think that’s too much?’
” ‘No,’ I replied. ‘In fact, I don’t think it’s enough.’
” ‘Well, how many do you think we should order?’ he asked.
” ‘Three million,’ I said.
“It was a good thing I was sitting down when he said thirty thousand, and that he was sitting down when I said three million.
“A classic corporate compromise was struck. Goodyear would canvass its dealers and find out exactly how many records each dealer thought he could sell. Survey forms were mailed out, and several weeks later the returns were in. Goodyear would order ninety thousand records. Now if you were to divide sixty thousand into ninety thousand, that comes to one and a half records per Goodyear outlet. I felt that Goodyear’s dealers, all sixty thousand of them, did not know what they were talking about for two reasons: first, common logic told me that if Goodyear went ahead and advertised ‘The Great Songs of Christmas,’ considerably more than 1.5 customers per store would come in to buy this immensely desirable record; second, I knew it would be impossible to buy half a record from Columbia.
“Unfortunately there is nothing as unassailable in corporate decision-making as a field consensus. Once a survey of dealers has been made it is easier to amend the Constitution of the United States than to revise the immutable revelation of that survey. Nevertheless, I decided to overide that immutable revelation, and I used a most effective technique. I told as many people as possible that I thought the field survey was all wrong. I conducted this nefarious campaign for several weeks, and before long the Goodyear order began to rise like an undervalued stock that suddenly announces a cure for old age. Before long I had successfully increased the Goodyear order to nine hundred thousand records — and I still felt this was far below the amount they should have ordered. But when a senior vice president of a billion dollar corporation calls you in his office and says, ‘I’ve had enough, Stanley,’ you know your client has had enough. The program was finally underway with an initial order for nine hundred thousand albums of ‘The Great Songs of Christmas.’
“The decision was made, and order was placed, advertising was prepared, everything was humming along briskly at Goodyear until a new problem reared its troublesome head: security. Firestone, a major competitor of Goodyear, was also going to offer a record of Christmas music that year. These coincidences are common in the world of ideas, but the deciding factors are the relative quality of the ideas and the determination with which management supports them. I was convinced that no Christmas album on earth would match the majesty of Goodyear’s ‘Great Songs of Christmas,’ and there was no doubt about management’s enthusiasm for the quality of their offering. I was therefore successful in allaying Goodyear’s fears about having their pre-Christmas program neutralized by the Friestone record. And I heard subsequently that Firestone had ordered considerably less records. It would be an interesting derby: Goodyear had to liquidate nine hundred thousand albums; Firestone had to liquidate far less. (There were moments, I will confess, when I perspired a little, but never in Akron.)
“I will spare you further suspense. By December 1, 1961, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company instructed its advertising agency to cancel all advertising for Album One of ‘The Great Songs of Christmas’ for one eminently businesslike reason that was emphatically substantiated by an urgent field survey: there was not a single album left in the United States. Fully three weeks before Christmas, more than nine hundred thousand Americans had gone to Goodyear outlets to purchase this classic anthology of Christmas music.
“Alert readers have no doubt noted the phrase ‘Album One.’ The Goodyear people in Akron never expected my musical notions to survive even a first season. But I can reveal with more than a modicum of pride that Goodyear repeated the program in 1962, with a complete new set of Christmas songs, performed by an entirely new lineup of distinguished artists. For that second Christmas season, Goodyear placed an order for one and a half million rocords. By the first week of December, for the secound year in succession, Goodyear direct its advertising agency to cancel all advertising for ‘The Great Songs of Christmas’ because they had by then sold out the entire inventory of record albums.
“In 1963 ‘The Great Songs of Christmas’ was repeated again. To show you what a fertile lode I had tapped with this idea, here is a sampling of the twenty selections that made up the third year’s version of this remarkable series:
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‘Silent Night’ Julie Andrews
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‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ Mormon Tabernacle Choir
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‘Ave Maria’ Isaac Stern
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‘Panis Angelicus’ Robert Goulet
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‘Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine’ New Christy Minstrels
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‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’ Norman Luboff Choir
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‘Carol of the Bells’ Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic
“That year Goodyear ordered a little under two million albums. And, again, during the third year, Goodyear cancelled all its advertising before the middle of December, because every record had been purchased.
“By 1966 Goodyear ordered nearly three million records — the figure I proposed to Victor Holt in the first place — and Goodyear sold out the entire order.
“In a period of seven years, Goodyear will have sold nearly fifteen million Christmas records through its tire outlets. Of these fifteen million customers, Goodyear will sell tires or accessories to no less than eighty percent of them. In other words, an idea that no one expected, that no one wanted, that no one anticipated would succeed, has actually been helping Goodyear sell its products to twelve million customers without costing the company a penny.
“One postscript: the advertising agency that was instructed year after year to cancel all advertising for ‘The Great Songs of Christmas’ because it had been sold out weeks before December 25 was Young & Rubicam. The greatest premium record of the decade had been initiated and sold by its old alumnus.
“In the record business, if you are successful enough to sell fifty thousand records you immediately receive a certificate of recognition from the record company. If you sell one hundred thousand copies you get a free lunch at the Waldorf Astoria as a guest of the president of the record company. If you sell two hundred and fifty thousand records, the record company opens up all their files of available talent, and you can then go ahead and put together a truly incredible anthology for your next opus. But if you sell a million records, you get a gold record — and very few gold records have ever been awarded in the premium record field. Seven gold records have been awarded to our company for million record premiums.
“Yet the memory of that gorilla still troubles me. Whenever I visit a new city I always go to the zoo — to the gorilla cage, where I whistle ‘Where in the World’ — hoping, hoping, hoping that some day the co-star of ‘Hilarities’ will rise from his straw bed and beat his massive chest in the rekindling of his showbiz memories.”
So, there we have it. The story of the birth of Goodyear’s “Great Songs of Christmas” premium record series by Columbia Records told by the idea man himself. Thank heavens for creative, imaginative people who “put carts before horses, and feeling before logic.”
While Tale of the Blue Horse and Other Million Dollar Adventures is long out of print, you can find copies for purchase from various on-line merchants. If you’re lucky, you might find a copy at your local library. The book is an engaging and entertaining account of the highly successful career of an independent thinker.
Tale of the Blue Horse and Other Million Dollar Adventures., Stanley Arnold. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1968.
This blog is written and published by DLF Music Transfer, LLC dba Christmas LPs to CD. For more information on Christmas music or to purchase CDs of classic Christmas records on CD, please visit our website www.christmaslpstocd.com , call us 888-384-6970, or e-mail us david@dlfmusic.com.
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