Automatic Age

19
AUTOMATIC AGE
October, 1937
A dvertising For T he O perator
B y B . T . P e r k in s
Sales Manager, Coin Machine Division
0. D. Jennings & Company
H AT, advertising for
the o p era to r? Sure,
why not — advertising
can and does sell the manufact­
urers’ machines. It can and does
do such impossible feats as sell­
ing snowballs to Eskimos.
If
advertising is the manufactur­
er’s key to sales success, why
can’t it be the operator’s key to
success also? If you’ve got a
few minutes, let’s go over to the
corner and hash this thing over
a bit.
W
Kindergarten lesson number
one in advertising is that every­
body is an advertiser from the
cradle up. Not the kind of ad­
vertising, of course, that comes
off the printer’s press, but the
kind of advertising that’s just
as effective if properly used. Al­
most from the minute we are
born, all of us begin to advertise
our own wares and our own ac­
complishments. Johnny, age ten,
and mama’s little brat, goes at
this advertising business ham­
mer and tongs.
A t recess he shoves and push­
es and hollers and screams and
fights. He’s doing his best to
advertise his own personality.
He’s doing his best to sell the
idea that Johnny is a great guy
and a great man among men.
Whether or not he makes a suc­
cess of it is open to question.
You would have to be a ten year
old to decide the effectiveness of
Johnny’s particular brand of ad­
vertising.
Clarabell, age eighteen, goes
off on a different tack. Without
B. T . P e rk in s
ever taking an hour’s class les­
son in advertising psychology,
she knows all about color, sym­
metry, form and balance. Her
clothes are the smartest, the
most up to date she can buy.
They’re colorful, attractive and
appealing. She wears them with
the swank of Fifth Avenue style.
A great advertiser, this Clara­
bell gal.
And so you can look about you
and see the gentle art of adver­
tising being p racticed every­
where. Some do it gracefully
and well. Some have a host of
friends and an admiring follow­
ing. Some advertise so success­
fully, that they become either
rich, or happy, or both, depend­
ing on what they consider most
important.
Others enjoy lesser success.
Others are poor a d v e rtise rs.
© International A rca d e M useum
Their circle of friends is smaller.
Their accomplishments in life
are fewer.
So why not advertising for the
operator?
The manufacturer employs an
advertising manager who knows
the art of layout, photography,
type composition and color. He
knows, or is supposed to know,
the complicated mechanics of
modern day printing and bind­
ing.
The operator needs no adver­
tising manager. He can be his
own skilled and accomplished ad
man.
Let’s not moralize here about
what makes good advertising for
operators. Any novice who has
just placed his first machines on
location can sit down and in ten
minutes make out a list of what
to do and what not to do to be
a good advertiser. Things like
courtesy, prompt service, new
equipment, etc., are so obvious
that you’d be pained to read a
list of them and so would I.
The important thing is that
you can be an advertiser. If this
brief, but scarcely learned dis­
sertation puts over the thought
that any operator can be a first
rate advertiser, then, our pur­
pose is accomplished. There are
no secrets of how to be a good
advertiser. What’s more impor­
tant is a determination to get in
there with new equipment when
it's really new, to service ma­
chines the way they should be
serviced and to give locations
the sort of treatment they should
have.
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