Motion Picture News (Oct 1913 - Jan 1914)

The Motion Picture News MOVING PICTURE NEWS EXHIBITORS' TIMES Established 1908 Established 1913 Volume VIII January 3, 1914 Number 26 "Showing" vs. "Getting" Advertisers THE publisher of a trade journal was talking with a prospective advertiser one day. when one of the advertising solicitors came in. "Well," announced the latter jubilantly, "I got three more to-day,'' meaning "three more" advertisers. * * * BOTH publisher and prospective advertiser winced; neither particularly cared to hear the advertiser alluded to as "got," a victim, as it were, cajoled, captured and tied. When the advertiser left the publisher's office the latter held a further conversation with his solicitor. * * * ttrT"V\KE the word 'getting' out of your advertising vocabulary," he advised. "It has no place there. "It leads one to believe that you don't quite understand what advertising really means. "Let us see : •* much less than they were sold a generation ago. "But that doesn't interest the advertiser. * * * ' 1 T T 1 S position is simply this : * "He finds that we are producing a g'ood publication. It goes regularly to a certain number of possible purchasers of his goods. "He discovers that through its pages he can reach these purchasers more cheaply than individually under a two-cent stamp — still more cheaply than if he published his own magazine. * * * 4' A 'ie furtner knows that his announcement is dignified by its appearance in a good magazine and that the reader who has paid good money to receive this good magazine is very apt to prove a good customer for his goods. "That is all he cares about. ''\X7"E are making here and marketing a certain * * product called a magazine. We are manufacturers, just like the manufacturers you say you 'got' to-day. "In order to succeed we must make a good magazine. Otherwise we won't sell it. * * * ""T^HIS then is our main problem — making and selling a magazine. The advertising we carry is purely an incidental, a secondary matter. It is a later problem. * * * "/^ OOD magazines were made and sold before advertising was invented. Even within fairly recent years newspapers — the London Times, for instance— were made and sold with scarcely a line of advertising. * * * 4 ' T> UT advertising has become a tremendous commercial factor — and therefore a great publishing factor. Because of this we publishers of this day are enabled to make better magazines and sell them for ' ' Q O all you need do is to 'show' him this opportunity ^ — this publication, its circulation, its gain, its kind of circulation, its territorial distribution. "You 'show' him ; you don't 'get' him. * * * ' ' T F you 'get' him without 'showing' him, he won't *■ appreciate the value of your publication and how best to use it. If you don't dare 'show' him, it won't avail you, and it will hurt you to 'get' him, for then you won't hold him. * * * ' ' ' ETTING' advertisers mean persuading them to advertise through personality, cajolery, appeals to 'help us out.' It is false and fruitless to all concerned. It is waste for the advertiser and eventual ruin for the publication, for in the latter instance it is building on the sands. It is writing advertising ahead of circulation, which is the cart before the horse. * * * " ' C HOWING' advertisers means giving them an ^ opportunity and us the support we are honestly entitled to in getting out a constantly better product."