Reel and Slide (Jan-Sep 1919)

REEL and SLIDE Selling Goods by Illustrated Lectures Combination of Good Speaker, Moving Pictures and Lantern Slides Win Same Idea May Be Applied to Most Any Line of Business, Says Expert By E. P. Corbett (Manager, Publicity Department, National Cash Register Co.) IN telling something about the experience of the National Cash Register Company with lantern slides and moving pictures in connection with a lecture, I can perhaps best show why the company believes in their use by quoting a few paragraphs from its "Hints for Advance Men, Lecturers and Operators." "You are engaged in teaching through the eye. It will help you in your work to know m just what is meant by 'teaching through the eye.' Thoughts are formed from mental images or pictures. These reach the mind through the five senses. What Tests Have Shown "Sight is by far the most important of the senses. It has been proved that 87 per cent of what we know is learned through the sense of seeing. Only 7 per cent of our knowledge is gained through the sense of hearing. In other words, the impressions received through the eye are twelve times stronger, than those received through the ear. "The mind retains pictures taken through the eye when those coming through the ear are forgotten. That is why the best way to teach is through the eye. Next to experience, the best teacher is the picture that gives the mind an image of the thing itself. Describe a modern locomotive to a person who has never seen one, and it means nothing to him. But let him look at a motion picture of a locomotive, and he will always remember it. "A picture has no nationality. It speaks to each individual in his own tongue, no matter what his language may be ; it talks in the way that everybody, child or adult, can best understand. A picture speaks all languages and talks to all ages. In all the world only nature itself carries so universal a message. "The lecturer is the connecting link between the pictures and the people. It is very important that he should favorably impress his audience. This applies not only to his personal appearance, but to what he says and how he says it. Remember that pictures speak more effectively than words. "Therefore, he should use few words and small words. Big ideas can always be expressed in small words. "The lecturer's part is briefly to explain the pictures. Use words that a child can understand. Big ideas can be best expressed in small words." Company Now Sends Out Lecturers In late years the National Cash Register Company has had several lecturers on the road giving what is known as the "Merchant's Lecture." Undoubtedly similar lectures could be utilized with profit in other lines of business. This shows by moving pictures "The Troubles of a Merchant and How to Stop Them." It depicts strikingly the many ways in which the merchant loses money. It shows how the clerks too often neglect customers when the boss is away. It shows how customers are lost because money they have paid on account was not credited and they were sent another bill. It shows how easy it is to lose charge slips, which to a merchant represent money. In fact, it shows in an absolutely convincing manner all those little things in store management which go to make the difference between efficiency and inefficiency, success and failure. Of course, the cure for these troubles is the cash register. That is a fact that the experience of thirty-five years has absolutely proven to the National Cash Register Company and countless thousands of merchants. This "Merchant's Lecture" film is strictly educational. It is designed to actually show the merchant his troubles in the strongest possible way — to make him realize the time, labor and money he too often wastes through inefficient methods. To get back to the lecture : Hundreds of thousands of merchants and clerks in all parts of this country and Canada have seen this lecture. Thousands of merchants have, through seeing these pictures, recognized for the first time conditions which had long been existing in their own stores, but which they had previously been unable to see. Hundreds of clerks in viewing this film for the first time saw themselves as others see them, and many of them achieved later success as a result of receiving a picture lesson that made better men and salesmen of them. No merchant who was at all open-minded or progressive could see those pictures without being benefited by them. They could actually see on the screen the results of lack of system. When they saw before them a sale made, the customer walking out with the goods, and then the clerk or proprietor being interrupted and forgetting afterward to make the charge entry, not one of them but was forced to wonder how many times that had happened in his store. Advertising Sells Ideas It seems to be a peculiar fact that most people live, for the time being, in the pictures they view. That is to say, unconsciously they associate themselves with what is being enacted in the picture. To illustrate: If I tell a man a story about a thug catching a man by the throat and hitting him over the head with a blackjack, he simply shakes his head and says, "Yes, that is too bad," but let me show him a picture of the same thing on the screen, and he shudders and wonders what he would do if that happened to him. And the chances are that that night he will be on the alert every time a man approaches him on the street. Advertising is primarily educational in that it sells ideas. Advertising does not sell goods — it sells the advertiser's belief in the merit of those goods. The better an advertisement is the stronger will be the belief in the minds of those who see that advertisement. The mind is most open to receive a suggestion when it is in a negative condition. When an audience is sitting quietly in the dark watching pictures flash on the screen, it is in an ideal condition of negativity. Constantly, better ideas and better methods are being brought to bear on this great visual movement and its service in behalf of the business man as well as the educator is now almost ranking with the printed word. Those who have applied it intelligently have had no cause to complain ; its effectiveness depends upon the ability of the men behind the movement to direct its destinies properly. ■ The "sea" is being "charted" and nowadays the advertiser has certain rules by which he may steer a proper course in his screen work. The fact that the National Cash Register screen activities have not lessened but increased over a period of years — including the uncharted pioneer years — show that we still have faith.