Just bear in mind, too, that you haven’t merely got to have them look at your slide, but arouse them to action. This can be done by having prepared a serial story in picture form on similar lines to the comic supplements in the metropolitan Sunday journals. Have a series of slides made of it, showing one each day until the story is told. A few days before putting it on the screen of the local movie show, get the operator to throw on a rough slide to this effect: “Watch out for the story, ‘The Good Smith’s Meat Did for the White Family.’” This applies to a butcher, but a story can be written around every trade. There are firms who specialize in this kind of work. This plan has been attended with excellent results wherever tried out.
If, by ingenuity, you can make the picture on the slide move, so much the better. A London manufacturer boosted his bottled beer by showing the slide of a dog drinking his master’s beer when he was out of the room. Every time the dog lapped up the dinner stout, the audiences could not refrain from laughing heartily.
One way by which to get on good terms with the motion-picture exhibitor is to offer a liberal sample of your special line to the first hundred attending the performance on the morrow. This allows a direct appeal to be presented, and a Brooklyn grocery store has made good in drawing marked attention to their own brand of tea.
Another way to make the fans laugh is to have a witty verse written alongside an appropriate picture. I forget the actual verse of it, but a Brooklyn hand laundry draws the distinction between the ape days, when clean laundry was not necessary, and the vital importance to-day.
Slide advertising puts one over the press in securing the concentration of readers. Surely, then, it is worth while paying more attention to this excellent medium.
XXX.
MAINTAINING THE INTEREST IN SLIDE ADVERTISING
It is hard to keep pace with the progress of the motion picture. But a short time ago the one-reel subject was considered the maximum length; then came the feature, requiring up to twelve reels to tell its lengthy story. This was followed by the photoplay series—a number of stories linked around a set of characters, but each complete in itself. The movie producers, however, were not satisfied, so they tackled the serial proper, making a fifty-reel production and releasing it in two-reel installments.
The bearing these facts have on this article amounts to this: In motion-picture theater publicity, and slide advertising in particular, you have to cut the cloth according to the length, which, to be more explicit, means that you must watch the entertainment closely and follow the general trend.
You, as a slide advertiser, are in much the same position as the photoplay producer, who is not content to rest upon his laurels, thereby not giving the fans an opportunity to complain. All this has a certain physiological effect upon picture-play-goers, who expect slides to advance in a like manner. Now, let us see how you can benefit by running a series of ad. slides.
It will, in the first place, give you greater confidence in entering into a contract with the motion-picture exhibitor, as you owe it to the spectators to complete the series, or serial, you will begin so auspiciously. It is good money thrown away otherwise.