Corporate Calendars: Popularity on the Wane
Customers of McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Co. can start the new year by gazing at a full-color photograph of the company’s headquarters in Mesa, Ariz.
“Two million square feet of the world’s most advanced helicopter design and manufacturing facilities,” the caption intones for January in the company’s annual giveaway calendar.
The corporate pinup for January on TRW’s yearly promotional calendar features the graceful curves of a 1966 Lamborghini Miura. The Cleveland automotive products, electronics and defense firm chose to celebrate classic 12-cylinder automobiles in its 1987 promotional offering.
Cincinnati-based CFM International, an engine-making joint venture of SNECMA of France and General Electric, took the decidely highbrow route. Its oversize 1987 calendar is made up of frameable reproductions of French Impressionist and other fine art.
The company calendar is a time-honored, so to speak, method of grabbing a client’s attention.
“It used to be that every bank, funeral parlor, insurance agent and real estate agent gave calendars as Christmas gifts every year,” said Barbara Miller, calendar product information coordinator for Hallmark Cards.
But fewer companies are indulging in that particular brand of advertising giveaway each year for a variety of reasons, industry sources said. And while the complimentary calendar has become less plentiful, the number of fancy calendars sold at the retail level has mushroomed.
Hallmark estimates that the calendar industry does annual sales of between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion, of which about $400 million are “advertising specialty” calendars that are given away by businesses as a sales tool.
“It appears that fewer and fewer businesses are giving calendars away because they are a fairly expensive item,” Miller said. “At the same time, there is an explosive growth at the retail level, and more and more manufacturers are getting in the act.”
“Like anything that suddenly looks like it’s selling, you get a hundred other people jumping into it,” said Larry Sloan, chairman and chief executive of Price/Stern/Sloan Publishers, a Los Angeles book publisher that produces the Murphy’s Law and World’s Toughest Golf Holes calendars.
At the retail level, “probably more is being sold overall but less individually because there are so many others out there,” Sloan said. Sales of the Murphy’s Law wall calendars were up about 20% this year, while sales of the satirical golf calendar doubled, he said.
Each household owns an average of six calendars, Hallmark’s Miller noted, adding that calendars are usually displayed in the kitchen.
A survey by the Specialty Advertising Assn. of Irving, Tex., found that calendars made up 12.1%, or $372 million, of the $3.1 billion in specialty advertising sales in 1985, down from 14%, or $406 million, of the $2.9 billion in sales during 1984.
Sales of calendars fluctuate from year to year, but calendars are always among the most popular of specialty advertising items, said Lynn Halbardier, manager of external communications for the trade group.
Slower Growth Seen
“We have seen a slowing in the growth of the commercial calendar,” agreed Peter Geiger, vice president of marketing for Geiger Bros. of Lewiston, Me., a large publisher of promotional calendars that also puts out the Farmers’ Almanac. “It’s still growing to some extent, but not to the extent of the retail calendars.”
Companies have become more selective about where they send calendars because “things are more competitive and you have to watch your dollars more carefully,” Geiger said. The costs of producing calendars have grown with inflation and generally run between $1 and $4 per calendar produced by Geiger Bros. The Geiger calendars usually feature a company’s headquarters or products, he said.
“It’s not so much that calendars are no longer in vogue,” explained Bob Waldorf, president of the Idea Man Inc., a Los Angeles-based distributor of advertising specialty items.
“The number of vehicles that are available for advertising use, the variety, has increased so much,” Waldorf said. “With greater choices, people have gone to other things rather than calendars, but we still do a substantial calendar business.”
But at McCleery-Cumming Co. of Washington, Iowa, a large manufacturer of art calendars, 1986 has been the best year for calendar sales in company history, said Vice President Jerome Hoxton.
More of an Ad Vehicle
“We are selling more than in the past--but it has changed, I’ll grant that,” Hoxton said. “In more cases the calendar is being viewed very directly as an advertising vehicle” to associate firms and good customers rather than being distributed freely as gifts, he said.
Los Angeles-based Union Bank is one firm that has no plans to cut distribution of its “executive yearbook,” a white desk- or briefcase-size book for recording appointments, addresses and even tax-deductible items.
“Union Bank did send them to our good customers as we have in the past,” Vice President Patricia K. Sisley said. “We think it’s a very nice marketing tool.”
Santa Fe Railway cut its distribution of calendars to stockholders last year because its parent company had merged with the parent of Southern Pacific Railroad to form Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp.
“It just didn’t seem appropriate to send those (Southern Pacific) shareholders a Santa Fe Railway calendar,” said Bill Woodburn, Santa Fe Southern Pacific’s director of creative services.
The task of putting out the calendar was further complicated last year by a decision by the Interstate Commerce Commission to block the merger of the two railroads, which are still being operated as separate and competing companies. The Santa Fe calendar was published, although a bit late, a company spokesman said.
Among those companies that have abandoned calendars as a means of corporate promotion is Martin Marietta. The Bethesda, Md., aerospace company sent the last of its colorful desk calendars in 1984 and after the Department of Defense ruled that defense-related companies could not court clients through free lunches and gifts.
“Nobody said we had to eliminate our calendar, but it was a matter of principle,” spokesman William Harwood said.
“We lost a lot of friends when we stopped sending it,” Harwood joked. “We didn’t send out a notice, so some people thought they’d been cut off the list.”
