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Volume XXXIV
NEW YORK CITY, DECEMBER 11, 1926
No. 24
A Matter of Advertising
THERE is a very interesting question on the boards right now, important enough to have the serious attention of this industry.
I refer to the matter of the amusement rate placed by many big dailies and lesser newspapers upon motion picture advertising. The rateishigherbya considerable percentage than the run-of-paper, or regular commercial rate.
Here in New York an effort is being made by the Hanff-Metzger advertising agency, handling the Paramount business, to have the advertising rate made normal.
But it is not merely a New York City matter. It applies to exhibitors all over the country; it affects an outlay, annually, for the newspaper advertising of picture theatres, which is not less than ten million dollars; and it has a lot to do with the gross sales and the future of motion pictures.
It is a matter of large fundamental importance.
In effect, the motion picture people say to the newspaper: we want to buy good sized space so that we can give adequate service to the public. That's good enterprise for you, for us, for the public. But we cannot afford to and should not pay a rate made high by the publicity tactics of our predecessors in the entertainment business.
/Vnd the newspapers reply: it's your own fault, or at least the fault of the theatrical business, that the rate is abnormal. The theatre man has never been a legitimate advertiser— neither straightforward nor intelligent. Failing to give adequate service in his little stereotyped, advertising card, we are compelled to give our readers the adequate service in our own columns. Therefore, the rate is high and it will go higher.
What the newspaper says is true. No one knows it better than the trade press. But, on the other hand, the newspaper must realize that in the motion picture theatre of today, there is much more to advertise to a vastly greater audience than has ever been true of the legitimate, vaudeville, etc.
The picture theatre doesn't compete with the legitimate; it is away beyond that. It is even beyond competing witn the radio. The picture theatre, with its at>peai to the many, many, millions, is a direct competitor of the luxuries, semi-luxuries, and necessities for which the American dollar is spent and that means all the nationally advertised products of the land.
It is high time that the newspaper realized this fact; a national aggregate of over ten millions in advertising is a pretty good proof of it. If motion picture theatres want to increase their space and their dollars spent and ask only the rate their real competitors get, why not let them?
But it is also high time that our industrial leaders realize how motion pictures may be sold by advertising. Whatever their vision, daring and resources in production and distribution they are, nearly all of them, the worst advertising men in the industrial world. They are, in fact, still thinking along exactly the same lines that made it necessary for newspapers to levy a higher rate on theatre advertising.
It's time we came out of the woods, time we threw away the old circus ballyhoo and all its disreputable publicity tricks and sold pictures to the broad public as other reputable necessities are sold.