14
A u t o m a t ic A ge
ever be afraid of success. It is a fact that
expansion has never ibeen accomplished by
restriction. You have very striking evidences
of that. You have seen the rubber indus
try, the coffee industry, the sugar industry,
all attempting to restrict the business with
the idea of increasing the profits, only to
have it fail in every single industry. The
people who are industrious and the people
who should come in will come in no matter
what you do and if you sell the idea of the
industry so the public accepts the use of
the machines and so the merchants grant
you the locations, you create a much larger
total volume of business in which all o f you
share rather than competing for a smaller
volume of business.
Your job is to popularize the job of coin
operated machines and when you do that,
there is more business for all others and
most certainly for the manufacturers of
the machines, and bear in mind when you
are advertising you don’t advertise to a
standing or sitting audience like this. You
are advertising to a parade, a procession
of people.
Eleven years from today there will be
a new generation in control. It is rather
hard to imagine. One-third of a generation,
let’s say, will be here eleven years from
today and those people who are being edu
cated now are your buyers then, and that
procession goes on all the time every day—
thousands of peoiple coming into the mar
ket and thousands going out.
The vital
statistics will give you some conception of
your market as a parade and unless your
market is constantly educated to the value
of the thing or service you have to render,
you can not expect to get the share of it
which other industries are competing for.
You quickly find that you will be amply re
paid by acceptance of machines and more
ready granting of locations by merchants.
Now advertising is done by word of
mouth now. It doesn’t have to be done in
type. When it is done in type to millions
instead of scores, the whole industry is
rapidly accelerated. A background of adver
tising gives you an opportunity for a stand
ing with a merchant. It gives the mer
chant justification for his decision when he
puts in a coin operated machine. You can
sell men the amusement idea— golf, base
ball basketball, and so on. You can sell
© International Arcade Museum
March, 1931
women the idea that the machines that
their children patronize are worthy ma
chines and the merchandise good and clean,
of standard value. You can sell women on
the freshness and standard of quality of
the products they buy themselves. So you
may get some conception of exactly what
I am talking about. I made some layouts
for you, to give you an idea what the pub
lic would see and what they can not see,
and which message you can now get to
them. A s I have said, this is a job for
the entire industry.
(Mr. King showed the assemblage a lay
out for an advertisement)
Please bear in mind that these are mere
ly rough ideas so you may visualize some
thing ahead of your industry. You may
not do it this week or this year, but cer
tainly you will be faced with the necessity
if this is to be an industry of educating the
public to what you have to sell and educat
ing the merchants to the service you want
to give through the medium of the location
he has.
Now imagine that advertisement,— this is
enlarged, of course, so you may see it,— ‘ap
pearing in a national publication. Again
I say the layout and ideas are very rough
and done within a few hours, as Mr. Bond
will tell you. “ Strike up the band with a
five cent piece.” Here they are dancing to
an automatic music machine and at the
same time in here can be other machines
that are part of your industry. It wouldn’t
take much of that kind of advertising to
advertise these products and all of the prod
ucts that are made in your industry to a
greater degree of prestige than they now
enjoy or ever will enjoy until you put be
hind them the force of advertising.
These machines here are just picked at
random.
This is the old gum machines.
This one is the gun practice machine, and
so on. Down in here— it isn’t an here but
it should go here— would be a slogan that
would epitomize the whole industry, the one
essential idea you want to get across to
the public.
This is signed by the Coin
Machine Operators’ Association of America.
That might be whatever the name of that
organization may become or it may be a com
bination of the operators and manufactur
ers signature. And here would be a coupon
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