Moving Picture World (Jul - Aug 1918)

July 20. 1918 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 375 Harold Bolster. Willard Mack. Hugo Ballin. A. Lehr. Albert Weiss. GOLDWYN EXECUTIVES schedules but to win respect by abiding by our prices. We have done all of these things in Goldwyn. It is hardly necessary to restate our initial intentions, for exhibitors everywhere know that we have established ourselves by building on these solid foundations. Goldwyn for a year has operated nineteen offices in as many cities of the United States and to-day we are opening our twentieth office in New Orleans. Our other offices a.-o in Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle and Washington, D. C. In Canada Goldwyn Pictures, Ltd., has six offices, and we are actively operating in England, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, Porto Rico, San Domingo, Venezuela, Mexico, Central America, Italy, Dutch East Indies and Straits Settlements. Egypt, India, Burmah, Ceylon, Japan, China and the Philippines. We are now opening, in addition, France, Portugal and Spain through our export department. Out in the field we have sought to find a new kind of men for the motion picture business — men chosen from other big industries instead of just film-sellers who have grown up with the picture industry knowing only its methods and little or nothing about the successful methods of other businesses. We have kept our organization at the top small and compact. We reward our successful men out in the field. We do not "police" them to make them unhappy. We try to work under the Charles A. Dana policy of "Use Your Own Judgment." We would rather have our managers and salesmen develop their own initiative than to have to supply it from New York. Organization Believes in Itself. We are an enthusiastic organization believing in our product and ourselves. At the start of our selling career we made it a rule not to lie or to deceive each other. We hold our men who make occasional mistakes, but we drop those who make mistakes and try to cover them up. We make office managers out of our most successful salesmen, and there are plenty of other bigger openings for men who show real selling ability. We do not destroy the incentive of our men by bringing in highly-paid outsiders to get the bigger positions above them. We have man power because our men and ourselves have made it. When the outsider wonders how Goldwyn has created such a powerful selling mechanism he is not in possession of this information, but we are glad to have our exhibitors know these things about us. We operate under the mercantile slogans of "The exhibitor be pleased" and "The customer is nearly always right." This latter isn't always true, but you would be surprised to know how we benefit in good will by usually proceeding on this basis. One of the popular misconceptions of the industry is that the selling end is "a terrible business." Goldwyn does not feel that way — quite the contrary. It is a fine business and we have found thousands of exhibitors with money to spend just hungry for an organization to come along and play square with them; to sell them straight across the counter instead of trying to sell by chicannery and cunning. The operation of Goldwyn Distributing Corporation is in the hands of its officers: President, Samuel Goldfish; vice presidents, Alfred Weiss, F. B. Warren and Harold Bolster. Each Goldwyn executive keeps in as close personal contact with the nation's exhibitors as active pairs of feet and ample railroad mileage will permit. We have found that it pays to sell people by looking them in the eye. What Goldwyn is Giving In Service In Its Preparation of Exhibitor Advertising Material It Takes Large Account of Varying Individual Requirement*. THE motion picture industry is a business of queer infatuation and self-delusions. One of the infatuations and self-deceptions of the moment is to be found in so-called service departments for the preparation of promotion aids for the exhibitors of the country. A year ago, when Goldwyn was formed, the determination was reached to create an organization within an organization that would do a great deal without saying anything about it. Today the service department of Goldwyn is in possession of thousands of cards containing written notations from exhibitors over their sigatures saying: "Many thanks for this. * * * You helped me make a bigger success of my last picture than I could have made alone." "This material is great. * * * I never get anything like it elsewhere." "When you sent your representative to my town he went out and did with my local people the things I ought to have done for myself, but which I hadn't the time to do. I cleaned up with the picture." "Have you ever lived in my town? You even gave me the names and addresses of the women and the organizations that jumped in and helped me make a sensational success with 'Joan of Plattsburg.' " Use of the Word Publicity Is Shunned. What in most other, companies is loosely called the publicity department does not exist at all in Goldwyn. Use of the word publicity is shunned. There is an editorial office for the preparation of magazine and newspaper matter; press sheets and the written aids that are a part of showmanship; there is a sub-division of service equipped to give individual exhibitors personal service which does not mean the mere mailing to them of previously syndicated publicity matter. These two departments are a part of the sales organization. No man in these departments of Goldwyn has ever worked in the publicity department of any other motion picture organization. They have not been enslaved by the routine and methods which prevail in the industry. They have a fresh viewpoint — the exhibitors' viewpoint instead of the viewpoint of the company itself. Nothing in the form of written matter that does not ultimately result in the sale of a ticket at the box-office of a theater is considered as possessing value by these men. Conclusive proof of the success of such an organization is found in the hearty indorsements of this branch of the Goldwyn organization. Every Goldwyn manager and salesman in all of the offices of the company has so thoroughly absorbed the service methods of Goldwyn that its efficiency is multiplied by twenty, this representing the branch locations of the Goldwyn Distributing Corporation. During the coming season this work will be under the direction of Hunt Stromberg and Dwight S. Perrin, the latter