Wasted Opportunities at Show Times.
Page 2
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
It is to be presumed that, when a manufacturer decides to participate in the collective display of an industrial exhibition of any kind, he does so with the full intention of attracting as much of the right kind of attention as he can. Now, as a matter of fact, it is often to be noticed that the individual displays at such gatherings, and especially if they be motor shows, are more or less uninformative and bear few traces of initiative, or of attempts to be otherwise than commonplace. Only here and there do we even find special efforts put forward to attract, and when attracted to inform the visitor.
A lot of money is spent in the hiring and equipping of a stand and in innumerable incidental expenses, and yet it is tolerably certain that very little consideration will be given to what shall be shown or how it shall be displayed, beyond some attempt to get one of each standard type of chassis—if the exhibit is to be a vehicle one—into what is often too small a spate.
Quite a number of makers treat their exhibition
expenditure as they do the cost of their current advertisement space. We fear that not infrequently the same official has the company's initrests in both matters in his charge, and the advertisement department, instead of employing the best brains in the business at correspondingly high remuneration, is too often left to someone for whom "a job of some sort has to be found." The man in charge of a firm's publicity is not seldom a man who can do nothing in particular, and is therefore shunted on to a department which is presumed to be non-productive. That such shiftless methods are not by any means universal those who run may read. But there are others, and they are their own worst enemies. It is futile, after a show, to complain that it was of little use, if the individual display was dull, uninteresting and so ordinary as almost to bore the desirable visitor.
Just as it is wasteful to purchase extensive and expensive space in advertisement pages and then to leave the matter of its periodic filling to some incapable junior, so do we still find examples of wasted outlay at Motor shows. There should be careful thought and collective suggestion as to the making of the intended display. Why should not good selling points be indicated by suitable smartly-written placards placed on or about the details to which attention is drawn ? Bonnets should be open; methods of dismantling and replacement might well be graphically illustrated. Interior fittings of bodywork should be exposed and not kept bidden behind locked doors. Means should be taken to illustrate such advantages as accessibility of components, cheapness of maintenance, short overhang, large wheels, high ratio of platform area, etc., etc.
There should be better showmanship. Poor window dressing attracts no new customers, whether it be for self-raising flour or boxes of cigars. Wagons might well be staged suitably loaded. What a chance of especial publicity was lost at Manchester by the exhibitor who should have had the enterprise to appeal to local sentiment by staging a lorry carrying a 5-ton load of raw cotton. How the local Press would have seized on this object lesson : Would not every North Country visitor have crowded round it, whatever the chassis, on the same principle that a. theatre may inevitably be filled by people who want to see a real horse and cart on the stage?
There need be no attempt to attract the inquisitive idler, but there is no reason why the prospective customer should not be tempted to pause by an intelligent display. We watched people pass certain stands at Manchester—stands crowded with well-built models—simply because nothing caught their eyes.
We hear rumours of clever showmanship for Olympia already. It is to be hoped that all those who book space for next Silly will see that the right people are put to work to make the most of it.