"my head hurts" Too much info?Why do I post all this info that may just make your head hurt trying to understand it all?
Because of this section of the classic book "MY ADVENTURES WITH YOUR MONEY" called "ADVERTISING FOR THINKERS" . I do think this is a valuable perspective for our business. Simply put, the quote is this: "Never appeal to the intelligence of fools, no matter how easily they may part with their money. Turn your batteries on the thinking ones and convince them, and the unthinking will to follow." Fair?
Full quote:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44274/44274-h/44274-h.htm
ADVERTISING FOR THINKERS
Having "tried on the dog" my methods of advertising for nearly two years, that is to say, having conducted an advertising agency for mine promoters, and learned the business with their money, I had passed through the experimental stage and now marshalled a cardinal principal or two that I decided must guide me in the operations in which I had become more directly interested.
I resolved never to allow an advertisement to go out of the office that was unconvincing to a thinker. If my argument convinces the man of affairs, I determined, it will certainly win over the man of no affairs.
Dogmatically expressed, the idea was this:
Never appeal to the intelligence of fools, no matter how easily they may part with their money. Turn your batteries on the thinking ones and convince them, and the unthinking will to follow.
That principle was applied to the argument of the advertisement.
The headlines were constructed on an entirely different principle, namely, to be positive to an extreme.
The Bible was my exemplar. It says, "It is" or "It was," "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not," and the Bible rarely explains or tells why.
The strength of a headline lies in its positiveness.
The logic which directed that the flaring headline of my big display advertising copy embrace a very positive statement, and that the argument which followed in small type be convincing to the thinker, was based on a recognition of the fact, that, while boldness of statement invariably attracts attention, analysis is the final resort of the thinker before becoming convinced.
More circumspection was used also in the process of selecting media for the advertising. Newspapers that did not publish in their news-columns mining-stock quotations of issues traded in on the New York Curb, the Boston Stock Exchange, the Boston Curb, the Salt Lake Stock Exchange or the San Francisco Stock Exchange were taboo, on the theory that by this time trading in mining stocks had grown sufficiently popular to command a regular following, and that it was easier to appeal to those who had some experience in mining-stock speculations than to those who had never before ventured.
Subsequent advertising campaigns were always conducted from this viewpoint. I did not set the ocean on fire with my Stray Dog promotion, the advertising campaign of which was conducted on these lines, but this was due to circumstances which I explain further on. Later, when the Sullivan Trust Company grew and prospered, and afterward when I reached the East and learned more and more of the inside mechanism of the big Wall Street promotion game in rails and industrials as well as mining stocks, I found that my publicity principles were comparable to those accepted by the Street generally.
The mighty powers of Wall Street recognize the fact that it is not in the nature of things that fools should have much money, and thinkers, not fools, are the quarry of the successful modern-day promoter, high or low, honest or dishonest.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the man who thinks he knows it all because he has accumulated much money in his own pet business enterprise is a typical personage on whom the successful modern-day multi-millionaire Wall Street financier trains his batteries.
The honest promoter aims at both the thinker who thinks he knows but doesn't, and the thinker who really does know. He is compelled to appeal to both classes because the membership of the first outnumbers that of the second in the proportion of about 1,000 to 1.
In fine, for every dollar of "wise" money which is thrown into the vortex of speculation, $1,000 is "unwise," or considered so.
The initial Stray Dog and Indian Camp promotion campaign was only half successful at the outset. About 650,000 shares of Stray Dog and 350,000 shares of Indian Camp had been disposed of when the Manhattan boom began to lose its intensity. Promotions had been made a little too rapidly for public digestion. There were more miners at work than ever in the Manhattan camp, but the demand for securities was not keeping pace with the supply. Manhattan's initial boom appeared to be flattening out just as Goldfield's first boom had.
We met with a setback from another direction. Henry McCornick's banking connections in Salt Lake objected to the use of his name as president of the Stray Dog. At the very height of our advertising campaign Mr. McCornick resigned. We elected our engineer, "Jack" Campbell, president, but damage was done.