[Volume XXV J J
THE CHICAGO BANKER
22
The Girard National Bank
Of Philadelphia
Capital,	$ 2,000,000.00
Surplus and Profits, .	. 4,015,000.00
Deposits,	41,250,000.00
FRANCIS B. REEVES,	President
RICHARD L. AUSTIN	JOSEPH WAYNE, Jr.
Vice-President	Cashier
THEO. E. WIEDERSHEIM	CHARLES M. ASHTON
Second Vice-President	Asst. Cashier
To Satisfactorily Handle Your Business, You Need a Philadelphia Account
Check Listing Typewriter
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Send for full information and indorsements of banks where it is already in use.
FOX TYPEWRITER COMPANY
Executive Office and Factory
720-740 Front Street Grand Rapids, Mich.
and I would scalp the return coupon. So much for the general attitude—we call it “policy”—of the bank, as it affects the advertising.
When it comes to the question of teaching the public the value of banking on a basis such as I have mentioned above, we enter immediately upon the art or practice of educating, which is based on a science.
I do not pretend to be able to give you the keynote of successful advertising in a breath, but the main thing to bear in mind is never to publish an advertisement which anybody in your own business cannot understand. It is presumable that you do not employ people with less brains than the people with whom you do business.
I can illustrate the attitude of mind best by the blunt criticisms of my old preceptor when I was a student-at-law in Philadelphia. He used to say “You talk over the heads of the people. Your speech reads well but it don’t talk well. When you get up before a jury select out of that jury the man who impresses you as the dullest man in the box, and talk with him, argue with him, plead with him, show him, and when at last you see the light of human intelligence flame up in his eyes, shut up and sit down.”
That is the point, select the dullest man in the audience you are appealing to, and write your advertisement to him. When you are convinced that you have told him something in a manner and style that will make him grasp the point, you have probably written a good advertisement.
I know one of the most successful advertising managers in the United States who has a bright office boy, and he tries every one of his advertisements on that office boy. If, after reading it, that boy cannot give a clean-cut statement of what the advertisement has meant to him, my friend rewrites the copy until he reaches the boy’s intelligence.
The bank advertiser generally passes through three stages in his development to efficiency: (i) When he puts his card in the paper. (2) When he tries a little of everything—newspapers, calendars, novelties, circular letters, etc., etc., always provided the thing is cheap. (3) When he awakens to the fact that good advertising is just plain, commonsense talk to plain people in answer to questions some of them ask in his own daily experience, and placing it where the greatest number of these people will have a chance to read it.
a bank than without it. Third, That the bank is an economic necessity. Then yet another thing for extra good measure, I would prove to the community that our bank was pledged to its best interests by being interested in every movement for civic and commercial betterment. If I did not believe in my own business men, my own town and business enterprises enough to boost, I would buy an excursion trip ticket for the place I longed for
There are reasons why you get better bank stationery for your money when you specify
CONSTRUCTION
BOND
Although near the pinnacle of quality, Construction Bond occupies the middle position in price because of our method of selling direct to the man who makes your stationery, (never through jobbers), and only in amounts of 500 pounds or more.
The economies of this method of selling and handling are so marked in comparison with the multi-profit, hand-to-mouth methods by which other fine papers are sold, that Construction Bond offers a real saving to the banker who would like to secure “Impressive Stationery at a Usable Price."
Call your stenographer now and dictate:—
“ Please send us your Portfolio of specimen Letter-heads showing the various colors and thicknesses of Construction Bond, and mention the names of some local concerns who can supply it in our stationery.”
Call your stenographer now, or write it yourself before you forget it.
W.E.WROE&CO.
298 Michigan Boulevard, Chicago
His answer in substance was very simple. “For the very same reason that I would tell some facts about the kind of a shoe I was trying to sell. I’d make him understand what he was buying.” What does $29,000,000 assets mean to the average man? “The largest bank in Michigan” means something. Let us admit that it is a very silly thing to advertise ourselves by a puzzle that no one cares a button about unravelling—and let’s stop it. A Rumford, Maine, Trust Company treasurer says:	“You are protected against loss by a
capital stock of $100,000; a surplus of $100,000 ; undivided profits of $60,000; and a stockholders’ liability of $100,000. This means we must lose $360,000 before a depositor could lose a cent.”
That means something to every man who reads it. Isn’t it more effective? It is salesmanship. The real salesman always makes “two blades of grass grow where one grew before,” he does not work to get competitor’s business away from him, by cutting rates or giving special inducements; he does not overcertify, but he goes out and sells his goods at the market rate, and then he gives a customer such service that competition has not much of a show, and he is more interested in service and safety than he is in speculation.
Therefore the first step is to consider advertising a means to produce confidence. Confidence in turn is based on knowledge. And that on education. The remarkable part of this whole thing is, that education educates both the teacher and the taught. You can’t show people how you can be of use to them as a banker unless you commence to find out new ways of broadening the scope of your bank. The way to get more is to give more— for the man who gives as little as he can, gets as little as people can give him. That is the law—for it is perfectly natural to be selfish. But there is a difference, as another has said, between selfishness and greed. Selfishness studies the needs of the public—greed exacts the biggest tariff for what the public thinks it wants. When both parties to a transaction make a profit, lawyers haven’t a chance.
So it pays to educate our people whether they are up in the “neck of the woods” of Northern Wisconsin, or in the city of Milwaukee. We must educate them in three things:	First, That they can save money bet-
ter, more safely, more easily in a bank than out of it. Second, That any business man can do business more quickly, more profitably with