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Selling Within the Theatre 155
Contests.
Contests of many known varieties help not only to sell tickets for coming attractions but build patronage after the contest is staged. They will bring returns only in proportion to the effort put into them. Run them off casually and without regard for effect, and they will only mildly interest. The manager acting as master of ceremonies can make the contest especially interesting. If he is not qualified, he should get someone else to act as master of ceremonies. There are always men in any community who are "the life of the party." Get one of these to run off your contests. Pay him if necessary. But get someone who can put real spirit into the affair if you expect good results.
The best contest is one which helps to sell a coming program. Build up your contest around some idea in the photoplay which will be shown the following week. For instance, the Pretty Baby contest is more effective before the showing of a photoplay like "That's My Baby" than after it, or concurrent with the showing. The contest can arouse interest in the theme of coming features and thus attendance is built.
Timeliness. — Let your contest be timely, but wait until the contest idea has really caught on. An old fiddlers contest that followed too closely after the discovery of Mellie Dunham was not as effective as it would have been when interest was more widely awakened. A Charleston contest staged before the Charleston craze really caught on — or after it had died out — was not timely.
Prizes. — For any contest, seek the co-operation of your local merchants in the matter of prizes. Either induce them to donate suitable prizes in return for advertising and newspaper stories, or else get them to give you them at cost. Vary your prizes so as to patronize as many merchants as possible. See them a couple of weeks in advance, and get each merchant to display the prize in his window, supplying him with photographs and other material for window display. In this way, you have added half a dozen window displays for your contest at no extra cost and little extra effort. Obviously,