[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
10
Wisconsin Trust Company
MILWAUKEE
The Wisconsin National Bank
OF MILWAUKEE
CAPITAL $2,000,000	־
SURPLUS 1,000,000 ־
CAPITAL -	$500,000
SURPLUS 100,000 ־
OFFICERS
OLIVER C. FULLER, President	GARDNER P.STICKNEY, Vice-President
FRED. C. BEST, Secretary	r. L. SMITH, Assistant Secretary
OFFICERS
L.J. PETIT, President	HERMAN F. WOLF, Cashier
FRED’K KASTEN, Vice-President	L. G. BOURNIQUE, Asst. Cashier
CHAS. E. ARNOLD, 2nd Vice-President	W. L. CHENEY, Asst. Cashier
WALTER KASTEN, Asst. Cashier
DIRECTORS
L. J, Petit, Chairman Frederick Kasten R.W. Houghton Oliver C. Fuller Herman W. Falk	Charles Schriber Gustave Pabst Gardner P. Stickney
Isaac D. Adler	H. M. Thompson Patrick Cudahy
<&№№*> iM EgSm
Oliver C. Fuller Charles Schriber
DIRECTORS
Frederick Kasten	R. W. Houghton
Geo. D. Van Dyke	Gustave Pabst
H. M. Thompson	Patrick Cudahy
L. J. Petit Herman W. Falk Isaac D. Adler
each time with a new thought bearing more directly, as well it may, upon his personal welfare than any other news in the paper, it has performed its mission well.
There is a more personal, more effectual method of winning new depositors than any we have considered. I refer to the mailing: list.
Displayed in the newspaper the banker’s appeal is read by desirable and undesirable citizens alike. He cannot control circulation nor can he increase it. No newspaper can claim as readers all the desirable clients within banking distance. There is danger, too, that the bank’s appeal may be elbowed from the memory by other matters of interest in the paper.
Through a carefully prepared and frequently revised mailing list, the banker can talk to the very people whom he most desires as clients. A piece of mail matter excites a personal interest and is accompanied by no competing or distracting influences. It can be made a heart to heart talk. The mailing list can include potential clients on the outskirts of the territory where possibly the newspapers of neighboring towns are read.
Could the banker compare his mailing list with the circulation of the local newspapers, undoubtedly he would find his list larger and much better suited to his purposes.
And so the banker with a keen appetite for more business should have an up-to-date mailing list, and give everybody on it a liberal education on the advantages of an association with banks in general, and his in particular.
The prime requisite in advertising a bank is to have a good plan. Many bankers have well defined policies in all departments save that most important one of extending business. Too many are wont to let the advertising-policy develop as they go along. An appropriation expended through a skillfully pre-
novelty does not project on his mind living pictures of himself cherishing a pass book and rolling in wealth, it is not the novelty’s fault is it? Yet it is thought that some banks will insist in the future on lumbering up a bit of advertising novelty with some information calculated to create in somebody a yearning desire to do business with them.
With due consideration for the calendar and novelty method of advertising, let us bear in mind that people want facts. They want to be told how to get on in the world. If your calendars and novelties have coaxed many new faces to your counter, you may know that the real object of your advertising has been accomplished. When your experience has demonstrated that a hundred dollars’ worth of this sort of advertising has not put a hundred dollars’ worth of new business on your books, it’s time to try something else.
The much abused newspaper space is pregnant with possibilities for winning new depositors. As one scans his paper he eagerly absorbs the news, rejecting that, which is not. If the banker’s advertisement rewards him
one doubts its educational value, let him have his name placed on their mailing lists and see if the letters, booklets and other printed literature which will pour down upon him, do not tell a whole lot about the advantages of doing one’s banking by mail.
If well conceived advertising can win millions of deposits from afar, from people who never saw and never expect to see a living-soul connected with these institutions, whv cannot any banker here, by combining judicious advertising with personal effort, accomplish much in increasing his business?
A liberal education upon any subject cannot be acquired in one lesson.' The ordinary mind grasps but one thought at a time. This does not argue, however, that a beautiful calendar is the best sort of advertising because it impresses the mind only with the beauty of the art subject and generosity of the donor. Surely the mind of the recipient of an annual calendar from every bank in the neighborhood is not overtaxed or confused by the story of a bank’s service. A calendar which is a real art subject, as many of them are, will undoubtedly educate, and I won’t presume to say that a liberal education in art is not a logical preliminary to an education in the rudiments of finance. It is predicted, however, that in the future the hard headed banker will, more and more, demand that some room be left on his calendar, even at a sacrifice of artistic effect, to give some salient reasons why an account at his bank will prove a stepping stone to success.
Some accept the theory that novelties of all sorts have a wonderfully educational value. One has but to read between the lines when he sees the name of a bank displayed upon a novelty to discover the point of contact between his personal welfare and the aids and conveniences the bank offers him. If the