11 - THE MOVIES DO IT. TV DOES IT....WHY DON’T YOU DO IT?
Many years ago, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin was being maligned by a dangerous whispering campaign. A malicious rumor was being circulated. Advertisers were being told that the newspaper was no longer attractive to readers because it carried too much advertising and too little news. Immediate action was necessary. The gossip had to be squelched.
But how?
This is the way it was done.
The Bulletin clipped from its regular edition all reading matter of all kinds on one average day, classified it, and published it as a book. The book was called One Day. It contained 307 pages - as many as a hard-covered book; yet the Bulletin had printed all this news and feature material on one day and sold it, not for several dollars, but for a few cents. The printing of that book dramatized the fact that the Bulletin carried an enormous amount of interesting reading matter. It conveyed the facts more vividly, more interestingly, more impressively, than pages of figures and mere talk could have done. This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention. Experts in window display know the power of dramazation. For example, the manufacturers of a new rat poison gave dealers a window display that included two live rats. The week the rats were shown, sales zoomed to five times their normal rate. Television commercials abound with examples of the use of dramatic techniques in selling products. Sit down one evening in front of your television set and analyze what the advertisers do in each of their presentations. You will note how an antacid medicine changes the color of the acid in a test tube while its competitor doesn’t, how one brand of soap or detergent gets a greasy shirt clean when the other brand leaves it gray. You’ll see a car maneuver around a series of turns and curves - far
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