<
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/11/1077232/corporate-presentations-history/>
"It’s 1948, and it isn’t a great year for alcohol. Prohibition has come and
gone, and booze is a buyer’s market again. That much is obvious from Seagram’s
annual sales meeting, an 11-city traveling extravaganza designed to drum up
nationwide sales. No expense has been spared: there’s the two-hour,
professionally acted stage play about the life of a whiskey salesman. The
beautiful anteroom displays. The free drinks. But the real highlight is a
slideshow.
To call the Seagram-Vitarama a slideshow is an understatement. It’s an
experience: hundreds of images of the distilling process, set to music,
projected across five 40-by-15-foot screens. “It is composed of pictures, yet
it is not static,” comments one awed witness. “The overall effect is one of
magnificence.” Inspired by an Eastman Kodak exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair,
the Seagram-Vitarama is the first A/V presentation ever given at a sales
meeting. It will not be the last.
In the late ’40s, multimedia was a novelty. But by the early 1960s, nearly all
companies with national advertising budgets were using multimedia
gear—16-millimeter projectors, slide projectors, filmstrip projectors, and
overheads—in their sales training and promotions, for public relations, and as
part of their internal communications. Many employed in-house A/V directors,
who were as much showmen as technicians. Because although presentations have a
reputation for being tedious, when they’re done right, they’re theater. The
business world knows it. Ever since the days of the Vitarama, companies have
leveraged the dramatic power of images to sell their ideas to the world."
Via Violet Blue’s
Cybersecurity Roundup: December 17, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-17-118128318
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
