Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

Celling the Picture to the Public 'Ohis Department Was SstabltshecL September 23, 1911 bij its Present Sdttor^ &pes Wircbhrop Sargent Bamberger Makes An Interesting Test To Determine Sales Value of Papers ^pRYING to figure just how valuable newspaper space is to his theatre, H. lIL C. Bamberger, of the Freeport Theatre, Freeport, Long Island, has coman interesting, but we do not think wholly conclusive experiment. At least he has some basis for calculation. Perhaps you have tried to achieve a similar result. It wouldd be interesting to work out somje scheme that would give reliable data. If you have made any experiments along this line, we will appreciate it if you will give us your conclusions. Mr. Bamberger took a three-eighths, as illustrated on this page. As you will see he offers a free admission 10 any adult who will mark five words purposely misspelled. This advertisement appeared in the paper for Monday even, and on that evening comparatively few tickets were given, representing but 4.2 per cent of the admissions. Tuesday afternoon the percentage was 6.5 and in the evening 14.5. Wednesday the proportion was 18.3 and 23.1 respectively for matinee and night. The average on the entire five performances was 13.4. He figures that 25% of his patrons reside in Freeport and about 70% can be traced to smaller places within a radius of six miles, and he argues that the response represents about 4.63% of the newspaper’s circulation and assumes that half of these were told by others, which would give an efficiency of 2.3%. We do not know just how he arrived at these figures, but we do believe that he has failed to take into consideration two important points. A Tricky Stunt In the first place two of the words are misspelled on the hyphen. These are “advertisements” in line 8 and “misspelled” in line 12. Both of these are apt to escape the untrained reader. They probably would be able to catch the errors on straight spelling out, but they do not carry past the hyphen. This being so, perhaps many failed to find more than three words which seemed to them to be incorrect and concluded that there was some catch. And on the other hand there are persons who will not take the trouble to work out the idea. They figure it is not worth while. They may read and even be sold on the idea and yet fail to demand their free tickets. With these two factors to figure in, it is to be questioned whether Mr. Bamberger’s deductions are correct. At the same time we believe that he is right in his suggestion that space in the local paper is not highly profitable. Lem Stewart, while with Southern Enterprises, took a twenty per cent response as a working basis. In other words he figured that not more than one seat in five was sold directly as the result of newspaper advertising. We believe that the percentage will be found much lower in towns close to a large city where the metropolitan newspapers are given the preference over the local issues. Even where the local sheet has a fairly good circulation, the purchasers may not read the paper with the same thoroughness they give the city dailies. They may skim it over for the purely local news and then turn to the New York papers for the bulk of their reading. But we are inclined lo regard the local paper in a town near a large centre as at least five per cent efficient. Some years ago we went into this matter with the news handler in a town in central Maine. His sales were about equal to the circulation of the local daily. Fifteen per cent of his sales were of the Augusta paper and 85 per cent were of Boston newspapers. About eighty per cent of his sales overlapped the local circulation, and probably blanketed much of the local sheet. We don’t think that Mr. Bamberger has the correct answer, but we think that he will find out before he gets through. Don’t forgget to tell us what you did for Laughg Month. Playing Safe Walter League, of the Victory Theatre, Denver, used Clara Bow rather than Eddie Cantor to exploit Kid Boots. To that end he had a pint size youngster in a bathing suit riding around on top of an automobile playing the ukelele. A car similar to that used in the picture was supplied free in return for the advertising mention, and Clara carried the picture over better than Eddie would have done. Illustrated a Title John P. Read, of the Joie Theatre, Fort Smith, Ark., used cats in pajamas for The Cat’s Pajamas. One set were in a cage in the lobby while a store showed another collection and a man led a third section through the streets three times a day. This last stunt proved 'to be a riot for cats on a leader were something new and cats in pajamas newer still. Ball Player , Too Because Tommy Thevenow, who helped St. Louis win the pennant, claims Centralia, 111., as his home town, the inhabitants turned out to welcome his arrival. The Illinois Theatre steered the demonstration into the theatre and got a wonderful night for Bigger than Barnum’s. ASCHBA, SMALL V rkOGEIK Corinne FREEPORT VflUDEVIbbE We are doing something that we have never done before. This is being done fur a good reason. It will cost us hundreds of seats in the theater to find out how. many people are reading our advertisments; but we are willing to do this. The information abtained is that valuable. There are five mispelled words in this paragraph, mark them, present this entire ad at the Box Office (adults only) Monday, Tuesday or Wednseday of ' this week, and we will admit you absolutely free matinee or evening on any of those days. H. C. BAMBERGER’S ADVERTISEMENT TO TEST PATRONS This display from the Freeport Theatre was intended to give the managegr some line on how many persons read the theatrical advertisingg in the local paper. Mr. Bamberger figures that the response was very small.