XI.SALESMANSHIP DEMONSTRATIONS BY THE FILM
Motion-picture publicity is so pliable that arranging with movie theaters to put on a film of your product in the making and equipping salesmen with a reel and apparatus to demonstrate before prospective customers does not exhaust its uses.
I have unearthed a New York manufacturing concern in a large way of business who have fathomed the all-important matter of deriving the fullest value from their movie-advertising investment. They utilize their film to teach salesmanship to the employees. A large room has been rigged up as a miniature picture theater, and every week half-hourly pictorial demonstrations are given to thestaff. The film depicts most thoroughly the manufacture of goods sold by the firm.
It requires no great stretch of the imagination to realize that to attempt this knowledge in the ordinary way is oftentimes a too lengthy and intricate task, but the motion picture is so competent in simplifying the essential details that, after seeing the movie several times, even the veriest novice can talk intelligently to the likely buyer on every little point in connection with the making of the goods. Such clinching arguments make it easier to effect sales, and should the prospect imagine that the salesman is attempting to convince him with a lot of hot-air talk, there remains the actual film to back up his arguments.
An engineering firm I have come across in my travels make use of their private theater to take their out-of-town customers through the manufacturingprocesses of their wares. They being middlemen, the information thus obtained is passed on to the dubious consumer, with invariably satisfactory results.
Practically every manufacturing firm that has adopted—or intends so doing—the film as a branch of their advertising campaign may profit by applying the plans herewith outlined to their own special circumstances.