Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

WHAT TO SELL... Movies or Moviegoing? There are two kinds of selling in the movie business. The first kind is the selling of an individual picture or program. The second is the selling of the general idea of going to the movies. In the midst of all the industry talk about a big businessbuilding campaign, very little attention was paid to this second kind of selling, until some of exhibition's leaders at last week's COMPO meeting suddenly took a firm stand in support of institutional promotion. Now the organized industry, as represented by COMPO, must make up its mind how it plans to "build business". The distributors are as interested as the exhibitors in getting as many people as possible to buy movie tickets, but, let's face it, there is a certain degree of running with the tide. The film companies think only in terms of their own pictures, how best to exploit them, how most profitably to distribute them. If summer is when more people go to the movies, then most distributors save their big attractions for the two mid-summer months. But business building, unlike individual picture selling, isn't a job where you can pick your own spots on the calendar. You have to keep at it twelve months every year. No one would suggest, of course, that the promotion of individual motion pictures is not a prime requisite for the welfare of the industry at large. But the old theory that "there's nothing wrong with this business that a good picture won't cure" isn't standing up as staunchly as it did in years gone by. Today, "good" isn't good enough; it has to be "great", and great films simply do not happen that often. NEED FIRMER PATRONAGE BASE Just plain horse sense would seem to dictate that the film distributors have at least as much to gain as the exhibitors in creating a stouter, firmer patronage basis for movies of every stripe. Every company has its share of run-of-the-mill product, which they are ready to write off at a loss in today's limited, selective market. Broadening that market by intensive institutional promotion seems like ABC economics. Or don't they know the ABC's in this business! The film companies, then, as well as the exhibitors, must start thinking in terms of re-stimulating the moviegoing urge in millions of latent moviegoers. They must be convinced — and they can be — that a visit to the movie theatre is a desirable, pleasurable experience — not just for the outstanding film, but even for the modestly entertaining one. In brief, the public must be motivated to moviegoing. The scale must be broad, national. The campaign must be strong, persistent. The aim must be to reeducate the public to the kind of creature comfort, escape, aesthetic satisfaction and general pleasure that regular theatregoing can mean for the average American man, woman and /or child. The encouragement of the weekly moviegoing habit is the first essential of our present-day promotional task. Any and every argument or persuasion the industry can muster is worth consideration as part of this vital effort. Studies and statements by psychiatrists and sociologists as to the value of moviegoing as relaxation for the housewife, the worker, the businessman should be assembled and used. A direct, persuasive sales pitch that spells out the need for going out to a movie must be devised and hammered across to the public. Intelligent national advertising and publicity campaigns should be — to use a favorite upperechelon word — implemented via mass communications media. WHAT KIND OF ORGANIZATION? How is the job to be done? The industry must have a cohesive working organization (whether COMPO or some other) which can supply the material and govern the operations of the whole effort. The actual designers of the institutional program should be advertising and public relations experts with a knowledge of the business, but free of direct entanglements with any of the components of the central organization. Provided with ample funds — and that means dollars in the millions— our governing organization would approve the most effective campaign and let 'er go. Once this whole arsenal of go-out-to-the-movies salesmanship were let loose upon the nation, the promotional ingenuity and effort of every theatreman would be called upon to back the national drive on his local level. First the motion picture industry must sell the public on the idea of going to the movies — not to a particular theatre, but to the movies generally. Then, taking advantage of all the impetus a properly managed national campaign of this type can generate, the individual theatre owner must sell his theatre specifically to the customers. What do we have to sell, as an industry and as individual businessmen? There's no gerat mystery about it. We sell pleas ( Continued on Page 14) Film BULLETIN June 24, 1 957 Page *