The Billboard 1920-12-25: Vol 32 Iss 52 (1920-12-25)

DECEMBER 25, 1920 The Billboard THE BAZAAR AND THE PROMOTER By HARRY E, BONNELL The bazaar and the relative connection with it of the promoter is a subject that right now, aud wore than ever perhaps, engrosses the attention of just about every individual identified, directly or otherwise, with the carnival concession ganie. The ouidoor carnival season at an end and over for 1920, the indoor fair and bazaar is now the thing, and probably never before in the history of concession activities and operat ions has there been anywhere near such a number of curious and interested eyes focussed on this line of promotion endeavor as at present. The repoited success of a minority number of indoor operators during the last few seasons seems to lave whetted the money seeking appetites of those who in former years had been content to idly feed on the bank roll accumulntions of @ more or less prosperous summer's outdoor Iidway campaign, and now the popular lrain is “everybody's doing it,” or at least y ave making the endeavor with the usual ratively few registered successes. The bazaar season of 1920-21 has given early promise of marking an all-important epoch in the history of indoor celebrations and to The Billboard and its **Bazaarland’’ page, more than to any other single agency no doubt, belongs the praise for it, with due credit, of course, being accorded individually to Willixm Ju¢kins Hewitt, of the New York office, the daddy of the idea and the sponsor for it at the beginning, and right now probably its one greatest booster, A bright, happy thought it was. t.o— this “Bazaarland’ idea—for it has solved and in tye most practical way the ever serious and HARRY E. BONNELL vexatious problem of bridging over the usually inactive period of the mid-winter layoff. No longer need the energetic concessioner sit idly by after the close of the outdoor season ard eat up the old summer ‘SB, R.,"’ for with the bazacr they who will may work the year around. To prepare a comprebensive end edifying commentary treatise on a subject so “road of seope and of such vast result getting possibilites as the indoor celebration is to attempt a task that calls for no little amount of courage and te do it proper justice really requires the chronicled observations and impressions of 2 person with far more practical knowledge than the writer can truthfully boast of, but if a few friendly, well-meant hints and suggestions, berm of a limited experience, shail c e to be fruitful of some little benefit to the clan, any imperfections and shortcomings D herein will be graciously overlooked, it fs he ed, @8 a matter of courteous public inGuigence. What goes to make a successful promotion? Generally and specifically, what are the essentiel requirements im order to show a satisfactory margin oa the prefit.page of the manager's ledger? These are the really vital questions over which the average bazaar owner and manager Snds himself pondering seriously in his mental search for the elements of successful results, and that goes also for the man who shows on the lots in summer. If called upon to venture a selvtion to these problems. the Writer's brief retort would be GOOD FOUNDATION WORK, without which no undertaking Under the sun can reasonably expect to succeed. And right here, it may be added, is where the important general agent moves into the spotlight. This is where that«te i blazing luminary of the advance starts to scintiliate. Wise and judicious routing and booking by a general agent whose thoro training makes him fulfy competent for this very responsible work, or fool booking by an incompetent, can make or break the most strongly financed and best equipped outdoor or indoor carnival outfit in the world, a fact which practical experience NEEDLE WORKERS DEMONSTRATORS Get the REAL money getter. 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In the bazaar field and its successful cultivation quite as much hinges on capable general agent work as in the outdoor game, and the right things to be done at the Proper time are Quite as many as the don’ts.’’ The trained nose of the experienced contracting pilot can pietty nigh smell the town with the favorable local conditions, industrially and otherwise, and if perchance it has been “‘jimmed’”’ recently by a former badly handled promotion, that fact is invariably detected by the G. A. who knows his business thoroly, and who will pass up a bad spot completely rather than run the risk of booking a ‘*bloomer.”’ The best local auspices obtainable in point of prestige and general good standing in the community as well as a large membership is another important item for serious consideration. John W. Moore, without a doubt one of the ablest and most successful bazaar promoters in this country, and compared with the vast majority of the present-day operators in point of experience a granddaddy at the game, is strong for the big membe:slip thing, and therein methinks is centered much of the real reason for the Moore successes. <A membership one thousand or more strong is the caper, altho & couple or three hundred less may be considered a good risk, provided the particular organization in question chances to stand well in the community and there is a spirit of unity and ‘“‘go-to-itness’’ present in the lodge With rare exceptions, the indoor game has not yet developed the promoter who can and does accomplish very successful results with a small membership. It simply cannot be done and the reason is a8 plain as it is patent. The membership season ticket does the trick when it comes to piling up the numerals on the gross, and when one stops to consider that not a great deal more than fifty per cent of the total names on the organization's roster can be figured on in &@p active way, as regards the sale of tickets, the advantage of the large memberShip can be appreciated. After all bas been said and done the promoter is merely the individual with the ideas. He is the director general of the project--the “man at the helm,” so to speak, and without the co-operation and united aid of the members his efforts are pretty certain to be unavailing. When it comes to the time for checking up on the results at the finish, the membership is the factor that really counts, and the more members engaged in the canvass cf tickets the greater naturally is the final sum-total of the gross receipts. Concerted effort from the very beginning to the conclusion of a prom>tion camaign is an absolutely vital necessity, and uness the auspices is preprtred and eagerly willing to contribute this all-important facior there can be but one eventuality, that of a flat and dismal failure, a Gnish as generally barmful as it is unpleasant. ‘‘Nothing succeeds like success,"’ is still the old and well-worn adage that applies just as splendidly here as it does in any other undertaking. The Signing of a sharing contract is but the simple scratch of a pen, but the detail work of promoting eny sort of a celebration to a successful conclusion means labor and plenty of it. Often has it occurred that a hard working special agent has fallen down on a well-planned promotion and in the end has been blamed for the fallure, where and when, as a@ matter of fact, the responsibility for the-‘‘bloomer”’ rightfully rests on the shoulders of a sleepy and indifferent organization committee, if not on the contracting agent who in the first place booked the date, There are instances, of course, where the element of luck and chance seems to figure rather prominently in the final outcome of a _ promotion, but happily these are rare exceptions rather than the general rule. It must be conceded, too, that the exercise of good or bad judgment in determining just what sort of promoting stunts will prove the most practical to meet the local situation and conditions is another mighty important factor in the effort to obtain successful results, and again there is where good foundation work shows a winning hand. This brings forth the ever knotty problem that every promoter, expert and novice alike, find themselves striving to solve. What promotion stunt will best serve to get the big money? Ah, there is the rub, There is no set rule or precedent to follow in staging a promotion, and the really progressive contest man inclines more to cast custom and precedent aside and strive to employ the newer aud modern methods developed from ideas of his own conception. As every contest expert well knows, what can be employed successfully in one place will fail to get results in another end vice versa, and again it is just as much a fact that a promotion which serves to ‘“‘bring home the bacon’ for one man is quite as likely to prove useless to a competitor. Blend what seems to be the most practical of the otber fellow’s methods, if you are observing enough to get and grasp them, and then put these in the melting pot with some original ileas of your own! The result sbould produce something worth while. provided the novice happens to ossess a sufficient amount of natural adartaBinity, Not altogether unlike the artist and the musician, the promoter is to a great extent born a promoter and not the product of actual making. If the real material is there it will develop in spite of handicap. It is never entirely in the making. The old familiar axiom, “It’s not so much what we do as it is the way we do it,’’ is fittingly anpropriate here, and this ‘“‘way we do it’ stuff is pretty much a combination of practical experience and natural intuition. Apropos of promotions, the old and time worn “popularity contest’? seems to be nearing the antique stage. It is moss grown and well nigh obsolete, especially when operated by the almost medieval ‘‘penny-a-vote’’ method. In spite of its antiquity this system is still in vogue, however, among not a few contest men, and after all perhaps is the only reliable method on @ short time promotion. But the shekel gathering possibilities of the ‘‘penny-a-vote’’ plan are so limited that many of the more progressive contest workers of today have abandoned it almost entirely, and in its place have substituted other tricks of the trade hetter calculated to get money in greater quantities ard at the same time provide a means for ‘‘*hecking up"’ on the contestants, which is always an essential. While on the subject of “short time promotions,” the writer here takes the stand that therein a goodly portion of the present-day carnival and bazaar managers are seriously shortsighted. Presumably for reasons of economy, the average traveling caravan magnate persists in operating with two contest men instead of three, or even four, which is essential for the production of the really gratifying and hoped for results. Under the two-men system the very most time that either of them can possibly figure on giving a contest is two weeks, which is just about half the period actually required to put over a winning promotion. This is taking into consideration the time seemingly lost, but spent necessarily just the same in getting on friendly speaking terms acqnaintance with the members of the local committee and also consumed on the important groundwork details that surround the “setting” of a successful promotion. Add to this this the time required for “‘steaming’’ a contest thru all the stages of incubation, and then ask why the hardworking and half discouraged promoter is wondering so often and so hard whether or not the final countup at the finish is going to show a worthwhile alance over the “‘nut.”” An answer to this reflection is that the more experienced and successfully established of the present-day contest experts are not inclined to undertake a real promotion under at least a three weeks’ period of time in which to put it thoroly thru the “‘setting’’ and “steaming” process, and more power to ‘em. Tf every man in the business would take a firmly insistent attitude on the ‘‘three or four weeks in a town’’ issne, the results would register many less failures and should, in the end, be so gratifyingly surprising to carnival owners and managers in general that the innovation would shortly become a welcomed change from the old order of things. To keep pace with the progress of time the promoter, of course, must go forward in proficiency and advanced ideas, and with that view and purpose in mind he must strive to get out of the obsolescent stage and state. ‘Forward!’’ That is the watchword of 1920-21, Just as it will be of the other years ahead in the march down the corridor of time. Far be it from the intent and purpose of the writer to establish a school for ambitious promoters, but a hint or so to advance seems ever timely. Get away as quickly and as far as possible from the old moss covered methods of yesterday. Use your brains, Brother Promoter. Think up Some new practical idea of your own. Don’t depend too much on the fruit that drops from the other fellow’s tree of thought. A little “‘mooching’”? now and then of a competitor’s successful methods may prove helpful, but the straight and open pirating of competitive contest systems and ideas will never get yuu to the goal you are seeking to reach, ond chiefly for the reason that the real ‘‘inside stuff’ that puts a promotion over a winner is invariably guarded and protected with the most religious care and caution. Once more we say, blend your old used ideas with something new and different. or give the old stuff a tryout from an apposite angle. Progress! That’s the word these days. Be prepared to show your manager that you are out of the old rut and on the up and up! We just simply cannot remain stationary in this game, as in any other line, for the moment we imagine that we sre standing still unconsciously we are drifting backward by virtue and reason of the speedy advance of our more progressive rivals and competitors. The old “‘pop’’ contest now a relic of antiquity, the very much overworked automobile promotion is nearly as antediluvian or soon will be, except in an occasional spot 80 raral almost that the natives are barely aware the world war armistice has been signed. The amateur promoter, educated to the plan and modus operandi by a close observation of the operations of some professional promoter, is the chap who is rapidly and effectively paving the way for the early complete -lecease of the auto drawing, and that same individual will put the skids under any other good money-getting idea, if the least bit wised up to the inside working of it. This is a condition, however, which the itinerant promoter cannot very well help, and about the only effective countermove is to constantly seek the more fertile soil as regards the particular methods that he employs. For the promoter of enterprising and progressive ideas and methods, the outlook is unusually bright and rosy. At last he is -oming into his own. In fact, he has already arrived. He is here, and nowhere perhaps is this more apparent than in the field of indoor carnival and bazaar endeavor. Here, as in every other line of business activity, it is a ‘“‘survival of the fittest,”’ and to the extent and degree that the promoter can produce the worth while res1lts he can now just about write in the salary figures of his contract in a way that a few seasons ago would have made him an object of managerial ridicule and scoff. The contest promoter, like the sabordinate in nearly every other line of business, is frequently made the object or ‘‘goat’’ of an imposition from his superiors that the writer believes to be absolutely unwarranted, This reference has to do with the evil custom practiced in seasons past and still not entirely out of vogue, whereby a percentage of the contest man’s hard earned promotion money is exacted for the benefit of some grasping general cgent. (Now if there is any valid reason why a general agent, who is drawing a lacrative sa ary with a generous expense allowance, or else may be working on the basis of a percentage of the gross receipts, should be permitted to ‘cut in’’ for this ‘‘extra,’’ it is something that would seem to require considerable elucidation to completely satisfy the fellow ‘‘from Missouri.” In some explanations of this unfair practice, the contention is that the general agent, traveling well in advance of the promoter, is in a position to ‘‘set’” the contest early, and thus enabling the promoter to roll up a larger gross, and with less effort perhaps. The former is consequently entitled to some special cash consideration. This is hardly a dehatable question, and ff so, the odds are Jargely in favor of the negative side. In the opinion of the writer, speaking from the angle of practical experience, this contention is the old bunk and is a camouflage pure and simple of what appears more like an avaricious noldup than arything else. If for the sake of argument the G. A. is justly entitled to this extra compen (Continued on page 97) Saleshoard Operators AGENTS and CONCESSIONAIRES Electric Lighted Doll ‘ Our 14-in Miss Lulu Electric Lighted > Doll with real Hair > Wig, Silk Dress and Gold Trim ming. Has plug, 5 ft. of cord, etc. and it lights. 1921 will be a big Electric Doli year and $40.00 253! Samples, $3.50 ¥6 cash with order, balance C. O. D. CARNIVAL & FAIR DOLL CO. 1816 S. KEDZIE AVE., CHICAGO, ILL. x