Ballyhoo (May 25, 1956)

Page scan 0006 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
May 25, 1956
Volume:
Ballyhoo (May 25, 1956) National
Leaf #:
0006
Language:
English
Collection:
Canada, Global Cinema, and Hollywood Studio System
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library, Greig Dymond in memory of David Dymond, Paul Moore and Jessica Whitehead
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:

Ballyhoo

  • Ontario 'B' District Ballyhoo, editor: Dan Krendel (1952-55)
  • Profit Blitz for ‘Fitz’, editor: Dan Krendel (1955)
  • National Ballyhoo, editor: Dan Krendel (1956-57)
  • Time Out for Ticket Talk, editor: Norman Barker (1960-61)

Ballyhoo (1952-61) was published by Famous Players Canadian Corporation as a mimeographed internal sales and theatre managers’ newsletter. Editor, Dan Krendel, had been division manager of the Ontario ‘B’ District since 1942, and initially created Ballyhoo in 1952 to circulate weekly updates for a regional sales contest. Ontario ‘B’ District Ballyhoo continued until 1955 as a tool for sharing and incentivizing new sales techniques and publicity methods as the movie business declined in the face of television and the baby boom.

In Fall 1955, Profit Blitz for ‘Fitz’ was a nationwide sales contest, named for Famous Players’ president J. J. Fitzgibbons, honouring his 25th year as head of the business. Dan Krendel was made National Drive Captain and edited a weekly newsletter for the campaign.

From 1956 until at least 1957, National Ballyhoo was published weekly with Krendel as editor. He continued the style and content developed earlier for his Ontario ‘B’ District, but now extended vastly for a chain-wide coast to coast scale. Ballyhoo’s sharing promotional tools came at a time of contracting box office as television and automobile ownership became prevalent in the mid-1950s.

By 1960 until at least 1961, Time Out for Ticket Talk continued as a mimeographed newsletter, edited by Norman Barker of the head office publicity department. Time Out was compiled on a less ambitious scale than Ballyhoo. Compared to the earlier national compilation of local publicity gimmicks, Time Out often contained only a single memo or reproduced local story, and was often undated and only informally edited.

– Paul Moore, March 2024

Date Added:
April 11, 2024
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WHERE THERE'S A ! WILL! Out Kelowna way there's a young fella name of Will Harper ... whose main objective in life séems to be promoting new and novel ways of pushing 6ut books of F.P,. tickets, and brother-r-r .., does he ever push tem, Every man, woman, child and dog in Kelowna knows about Will and his passion for getting rid of‘his self~imposed quota of books ... and here!s one of the reasons, Will makeS sure that nobody gets a chance to forget about the book ticket deal, Seems there's a weékly auction held in the local Scout auditorium every Friday night. Auctions are fascinating things to watch .., amazing how people will be gripped by the bidding fevér and shell out more for a piece of junk than they could buy it new. Will thought he'd try a gimmick. He had a tolk with the’ promoters,’and arranged for them bo offer at auction one book of F.P. tickets, Half way through the evening they offered’the book ... a $2.25 job ... and gave it the usual carny build up. Bidding started at ten cents and then the fun started, It jumped to a dollar, two dollars, and was finally knocked down to a local matron for $2.75 ... more than she could buy it for at any F.P, theatre, Grazy, hun? Well ... the point of the story is that everybody in town was talking about it, and kidding Will, and he loved it, Everybody in town knew about the books of tickets, and knew that they could puy them at his theatre for $2.55, He got more publicity out of this gag than if he had bought a full page in his daily. The important thing is that Will doesn't give the local folks a chance to forget about his books of tickets’... and that's why he personally unloads so many of them each year, An how're YOU doing in your town fella? Can you top this for salesmanship? THE NAKED SEA Seems I had some comments to make on this tuna fishing spectacular in an earlier issue, Did you bother doing anything about it? Well, Al Hartshorn out Oshawa way did, and wound’up with as fine a piece of promotion as I've seen in quite a while, Al arranged to screen the picture for the sports editor of the Times Gazette, owners of the several sporting goods stores in town, and the Times! carriers, They came down on a Saturday morning, they saw, they were thrilled, The Times published an excellent story in advance, and on opening day came through with a 350 liné pic of several of their carriers, plus good pic and theatre mention, To liven things up, Al contacted a local manufacturer of yo-yos and pursucded him to hold a contest on the stage, with several good prizes for the winners and yo~yos forsale phemcarrmtens. wound kids were thrilled and spread the good word around ... including good word-of-mouth advertising on the picture, It all goes to show what a little good thinking, and the will to follow through, can accomplish,