Our Town (United Artists) (1940)

STAGE "OUR TOWN” OLD HOME WEEK Strike the note of civic pride by arranging an "OUR TOWN" OLD HOME WEEK, featured by a visit back to the old home town of any and all men and women who have made good and achieved note in any field. Business men, writers, artists, political notables, or any others who formerly lived in your town should be invited to some sort of celebration such as a banquet or town meeting, to be received and congratulated by the Mayor, give their recollections of the old town, etc. The stunt has an "Our Town" angle that's sure-fire for enthusiastic participation by every element of the population. Play it up big—get the cooperation of all local interests from City Hall down—and you'll have a headline-making stunt. "BOOST-OUR-TOWN" CAMPAIGN Either in conjunction with "Our Town Shopping Week" or as a separate project, organize the public-spirited elements in your town for a "Boost Our Town" campaign. This has the same obvious advantages in local business-building possessed by the other civic promotion ideas presented on these pages. Booster organizations such as the trade association, Rotary, women's clubs, parent-teacher clubs, etc., should be willing to rally round a banner such as "Our Town" affords. Use all the avenues of publicity available to big town-wide drives of this kind: mass meetings, newspaper stories and ads, street banners, window streamers, radio programs, etc. Give every co-operation to the local boosters, and of course keep your picture and its typical American town characters to the fore. Die With Welfare Derive If any local charity or welfare drive, hospital fund or community chest campaign is to be run in your town during the period of your campaign, here's a ready-made tieup that stresses the appeals of civic pride and local interest. You can give such a drive important publicity help; co-operate and see that the "Our Town" appeal is stressed in all publicity and advertising. Slogans such as "For the Good of Our Town" will further your appeal to local pride and also put forward your show title. In connection with such a drive, you might arrange a benefit or a special screening, upping the price of the performance and donating the proceeds above usual prices to whatever charity is involved. TIE WITH NEWSPAPER FOR SPECIAL ISSUE Civic pride, interest in the home town, means better business for every type of local enterprise. This of course includes the local news¬ paper, which will benefit from any local business boom and will therefore be more than glad to lend its efforts toward starting one. Here's a big, commanding promotion in which your newspaper can work with you to the great mutual benefit of both. Get your editor to issue a big "Our Town" Special Supplement to be pub¬ lished as part of the regular paper either on opening day or some days in advance. The "Our Town" Special Supplement will be a nat¬ ural medium for all local advertisers on the "patronize home busi¬ ness" angle, and will pay handsomely in advertising revenue. For editorial content, you can spread yourself on headlines, stories and pictures about your show, keying all publicity to the angle that the picture shows all the advantages and virtues of the typical American town. Local personalities, local history and traditions will come in for discussion with constant comparison with the way such things appear in "Our Town." * * * Special supplements of this kind are always big profit-makers for newspapers. You'll get all the co-operation you want from the editor and business office. It's up to you to plan and execute this smashing promotion thoroughly in a way that will make "Our Town" the most talked-about event in your community! Promote Prizes For Local Couple Here's a merchant-tieup stunt with universal audience appeal, which you can run either in connection with your "Our Town Shopping Week" or as an independently planned promotion. Through the medium of your local newspaper run a popularity contest for the Most Typical Sweethearts of Our Town. This would / be an engaged couple, elected by popular vote through ballots printed in the newspaper over a period of, say, two weeks. Run photos of the leading contenders daily, accompanied by running stories on the con¬ test that hang it on the sweethearts, George and Emily (Billy Holden and Martha Scott) in the picture. Get local dealers to join in for publicity breaks by donating home furnishings, clothes, luggage, and the thousand and one other things which about-to-be-married couples need. Present the winning couple on the stage and make the presentation of gifts there; and if pos¬ sible, hold a good old-fashioned stage wedding with the new note that here is the finest, most typical young couple of "Our Town." Page Five