Suggestion Box 1945 US Office of War Information; World War II Home Front

more at http://quickfound.net/

War Activities Committee of the Motion Pictures Industry

October 21, 1943

'Describes how war plant workers in 1944 were encouraged to submit suggestions and how some of these suggestions, when put into practice, resulted in saving of time, labor and materials.'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestion_Box

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Suggestion Box is a short propaganda film produced in 1943 by the Office of War Information. Its purpose was to encourage workers to send in suggestions for more effective war production.

The film opens with a standard factory suggestion box and the many workers who slip pieces of paper in it as they walk by. The suggestions are then gathered and sent to Washington DC where a board of experts examines each one to find its merits for more efficient and speedy war production. A few examples are given:

a worker who was working on iron tubes finds a way to increase his production by lining them up all together

a black janitor suggests a way to save oil from being spilled

and a woman uses her Grandmother's method of button making to make better rivets.

Some of these people whose ideas are taken up by the committee are given awards for helping war production.

The film's message to use suggestion boxes was also spread through propaganda posters at the time...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestion_box

A suggestion box is a device for obtaining additional comments, questions, and requests. In its most basic and traditional form, it is a receptacle with an opening, like a voting box.

The suggestion box is used for collecting slips of paper with input from customers and patrons of a particular organization. Suggestion boxes may also exist internally, within an organization, such as means for garnering employee opinion...

Variations on this method include paper feedback forms which can be sent via postal mail, such as the "We value your input" or "How was the service today?" cards found in some restaurants; solicitations to provide comments over the telephone, such as a voluntary survey at the end of a transaction with a call center, or even an invitation on a printed store receipt to call and complete a customer satisfaction survey (sometimes offered with a product discount); or the placement of feedback forms on an institution's website.

Including mechanisms for customer comments beyond an ordinary point of service has several benefits. Suggestion boxes provide some degree of detachment (or sometimes, especially with computer-mediated communication, complete anonymity) from the person or service that a customer may be critiquing, and may therefore yield more frank and open feedback, thereby providing greater opportunities for obtaining accurate market research data and improving customer relations.

The internal routing of comments within an organization may also provide those without direct contact with customers a realistic appraisal of the quality of customer care being given. The external routing of responses to received suggestions, such as by posting responses to questions and requests on a physical or virtual bulletin board, may also help educate consumers and improve a company's image and customer loyalty...