Traveling publicity campaigns

The popular educational tour on wheels is a method of carrying news and facts from town to town, instead of distributing this information in wholesale manner to many towns at the same time through newspapers, letters, posters, and other familiar avenues for disseminating information quickly and widely. This use of a method resembling more or less the old-time place-to-place spreading of the news but in a modern, up-to-the-minute dress, even under the most favorable conditions involves a considerable outlay in money, a great deal of hard work, careful and detailed planning, and equally careful oversight throughout the journey and the follow-up period. Therefore the person or group contemplating such an undertaking will naturally wish to consider carefully its efficiency as a method of publicity before embarking on it.

In some instances the reason for using the truck or train is that it may be routed to remote rural districts not well served by the more modern methods of news distribution. Wherever it goes, however, the train or truck has two chief advantages as a publicity method; first, it is an economical way of bringing before scattered audiences well-equipped speakers or graphic and otherwise attractive illustrative material—economical because a single group of speakers or unit of exhibits may in this way be made to serve a large territory; and, second, its visit to each town may be made an important event, something which creates news and which may appeal to the imagination of people generally.

The tours that are described in the following pages suggest just a few of the unusual and graphic features that may be assembled in a traveling show to attract attention and to make facts and ideas more easily understood and remembered. The train or truck in addition, as already suggested, to bringing into town especially talented or well-informed speakers and demonstrators, brings also equipment for demonstrations that may be bulky, expensive, or for other reasons difficult to duplicate and distribute for display; also rare objects such as the people in the communities visited would not be likely to see at all, except as they are brought in for this brief visit.

The Train as an Event

The visit of the train, like the revival meeting, the fair, or the Fourth of July celebration, may be made such a striking event in each community that its program gets and holds the attention of many people who would not read a newspaper article or go to an ordinary meeting to learn about the same topic.

Such an event may be especially timely if a new movement or plan is about to be launched within the territory to be covered. The brief demonstration presented before a representative group of citizens gathered to meet the truck or train often paves the way for the organization of a permanent activity in the community. This is true because the method often allows for a more concentrated educational effort than can be effected in the same time through other types of campaigns. For example, the occasional visit of the agricultural special, demonstrating improved methods has, in many instances, preceded the forming of a county organization of farmers to devote themselves continuously to studying and experimenting in better farming.

A train or truck campaign, well handled, will help to give freshness to ideas which may become stale if they continue to reach the people in the same familiar forms. Whatever the subject matter or purpose of a local movement for community education or welfare, both the workers or leaders and the people who form the audiences are refreshed by variations from familiar methods of presenting the ideas that need to be gone over time and again in order to get the greater numbers to listen, to understand, and to assimilate them. The local effectiveness of the work of the county agricultural agent, or the tuberculosis committee, or the movement for better rural schools may sometimes be stimulated through the visit of traveling campaigners bringing reinforcements in the way of enthusiasm, news gathered along the route, or old ideas illustrated in new and striking ways.

A Tour as a Campaign “Feature”

One occasion when a train tour may be desirable is when the need is felt for a unique feature or “stunt” in a campaign that employs a great variety of methods. The Liberty Loan trains were expected to add “punch” to local campaigns and to make bond selling easier. When a vigorous effort is being concentrated on an issue or an idea, a tour of prominent speakers, or striking exhibits, or both, may add a spectacular element and secure much publicity; first, by getting direct attention for the idea, and second, by providing material for “news” both in the press and in the everyday talk of the people.

Novelty and the Danger of its Wearing Off

As a novel device for attracting attention both train and truck have a real though possibly a short-lived value. In many sections of the country the exhibit train has long ago become familiar, and already those who are seeking some new form in which to get their story over are equipping and operating motor trucks. In a few years these, too, may lose their power to arouse curiosity. However, the fact that the novelty of a device wears off does not necessarily destroy its value. While the novelty of the method itself may wear off, the contents of the train and the program of the itinerant campaigners leave no end of possibilities in the way of fresh attractions.

In the use of graphic methods there have been great advances within quite recent years. So far, only a few of the newer forms of expressing information in picturesque and dramatic forms have been used in truck and train projects. There is no reason why trains and trucks should not continue indefinitely to draw expectant visitors looking for the new features that may be added this year, just as a circus, a fair, or exposition is repeated successfully year after year. The exhibitor who uses an attention-getting device for the first time in any locality is to some extent responsible for the future success of any similar traveling shows in the places visited. People who went to see the first train or truck are likely to visit the second or stay away, according to the impression made by the first. This responsibility can be met through careful preparation and good management.

Not a Quick Method

A point sometimes urged in favor of the educational tour is its rapid method of carrying information over a wide area. It is undoubtedly the quickest way of displaying the same objects to a number of communities. But if you wish the people throughout your territory to have the same information as nearly as possible at the same time, any method in which the material is duplicated and sent out to all points at once from a central place is obviously more suitable than conveying the message from place to place.

Traveling Campaigns and Results

One objection frequently raised by those who have conducted educational tours is that they are quickly forgotten and bring no lasting results. This is probably a valid objection to the incompleteness of a particular campaign rather than to the method itself. If the follow-up work is not planned just as carefully and carried out as conscientiously as the tour itself, there is no reason to expect that people will remember it or that action will follow. Every form of publicity, whether a newspaper article, leaflet, lecture or motion picture would be just as quickly forgotten if it were an isolated effort and not part of a well-rounded educational campaign. In the section on follow-up work, page 106, methods are discussed of fixing the impressions made on the minds of visitors to the train and of inducing them to apply the instructions given.

Cost of Tours

What it costs usually plays a larger part in the choice of a publicity method than any other single factor. Analysis of the whole plan of the tour is needed in order to decide regarding the wisdom of spending money on it. An advance estimate ought to indicate whether a given expenditure on a traveling campaign appears likely to bring larger returns than the same amount spent on some other method.

The cost and the scale of different enterprises vary so greatly and prices are so different from year to year, that it is impossible to estimate, on the basis of one project, what another one is likely to cost.[1] By writing to the sources of information listed in the appendix, beginning on page 117, the reader will probably be able to obtain detailed information about the cost of any enterprise of a type that may interest him. Several directors of tours have reported that they consider the method too expensive. It was found too expensive in one northern state because the initial outlay was so great in comparison with the relatively short season during which the truck could be operated. In one southern state the expenses of an automobile tour were found to be out of proportion to the total budget of the organization. A number have reported the method inexpensive, but they may not have charged against their budget items that others have been obliged to include. Cars and hauling may have been provided by a railroad company; the truck may have been a gift; the specialists and demonstrators may have been regular members of the staff of the organization and their salaries not charged against the budget of the tour. In some cases the truck drivers have been volunteers. All of these things need to be taken into account in making any decision on the basis of the amount a tour has cost someone else. It is safe to say that, under the most favorable circumstances, a well-conducted traveling campaign is not a cheap method of publicity, and the organization considering it should be very sure that the enterprise is timely and especially suited to their purpose before embarking on the venture.

As Between Trains and Trucks

The most serious drawbacks to a train are that it must stay on a railway siding, is frequently inconvenient to reach, and its location hot and dusty in summer, lacking in open space where crowds can gather comfortably, and, worst of all, is noisy. Still another drawback is that the shape of a car is not adapted to the effective display of exhibits and it is difficult also to handle large numbers of visitors.

Even with these awkward handicaps, however, the railroad car has the advantage of greater size as a setting for exhibits and demonstrations. Exhibits and equipment for demonstrating, moreover, may be permanently set up in a train of cars, so that everything is in readiness for visitors at the time when the train reaches its stopping place. But the truck is a place for storing rather than displaying exhibits, which means that each time a program is given, material must be unpacked and set up in tents, in a hall, or out of doors.

Good points for the truck are that, roads and weather permitting, the truck campaigner may go wherever and whenever he pleases and stay as long as he likes, independent of the rails and schedules that limit the freedom of a train tour. Even bad roads have not prevented some campaigners from reaching what had seemed to be inaccessible districts.

While the trucks have in certain ways greater adaptability to varied conditions than trains, the latter will undoubtedly continue to be employed where its own special uses are of paramount importance and particularly in cases where the railroads may find it possible, as in many instances in the past, to provide transportation free or at a nominal price. The truck, on the other hand, is probably only at the beginning of its usefulness in educational and publicity work. There are still untried possibilities of contriving methods for the carrying of materials especially adapted to a quick display during a short stop in all sorts of places, which, it would seem, might invite to a fascinating degree the inventive genius of those interested in the popular spread of useful information.