We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
BALDWIN PICTURES CORPORATION 441
tising by sending callers from door to door to question householders. In most cases these tests indicated a preference for the company's pictures and a favorable inpression of the company's advertising. Many of the company's salesmen experienced a lessening of sales resistance on the part of exhibitors. When sales resistance was especially strong, a salesman frequently obtained an exhibitor's permission to pass out cards to his patrons asking what company's pictures they preferred. On the card all important producers were listed alphabetically. The results almost invariably were in favor of the company's pictures. Although the use of the cards was not intended primarily as a test, it constituted one of the best tests available to the company. The company continued its program of consumer advertising without a break. From time to time it made changes in type of copy and in media used. Up to 1928 only one other company, the Universal Pictures Corporation, had adopted any regular program of consumer advertising.
Commentary: This case illustrates one of the earliest attempts at direct consumer advertising on the part of motion picture distributors. The reasons why distributors had not undertaken direct consumer advertising are important. As pointed out in the case, they were based upon two factors. The first was the difficulty of timing an advertisement with the showing of a picture in a particular theater. The second was a question as to the effectiveness with which the trade name of a company could be made influential with the public. In more recent years, direct consumer advertising has become very much more general. There are several reasons for this. The entrance of producer-distributors themselves into the exhibition field was doubtless a factor. The depressed condition of the industry in 1926 and 1927 may have suggested the necessity of undertaking something new. A belief in the inadequacy of exhibitor effort probably played its part. It will be noted that under the Standard Exhibition Contract the exhibitor agreed to buy his advertising from the distributor, because of a conviction that better results would be obtained in this way. Other manufacturers had successfully appealed directly to consumers in selling their products and their experience suggested to the motion picture companies that they might do likewise. Banking firms and electrical companies had become interested in the motion picture industry and possibly were a contributing factor in bringing about the new policy. Finally, when one large producer-distributor undertook direct consumer advertising on a large scale, others felt more or less compelled to follow his example in self-defense.