The Greatest April Fool That Never Was

April Fool’s Day, 1975

Offices of The Merrill Anderson Company at 100 Park Avenue

The preposterous invitation was addressed to Merrill Anderson's chairman, Earl MacNeill. He raised an eyebrow and handed it to his second in command, Bud Sommer. Bud looked, smiled and handed it to me.

Back in my office I examined the mailing. Ostensibly a new afternoon newspaper was starting up. A Merrill Anderson representative and spouse were cordially invited to learn more about it. On a five-day Bermuda cruise. On the QE2. All expenses paid!

Any temptation to suspend disbelief vanished after a glance at the return address: 90 Park Avenue, the building across the street. From my office window I could see dozens of workers sitting, standing, scurrying about. Which one was the April Fool’s prankster?

Still, no harm in calling their bluff. I RSVP’d to 90 Park.

A few days later came the phone call. There had been a change in plan, a voice said. (That figured. Out with the cruise. In with a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry.)

A change in plan?

The Man Who Reshaped Trust Marketing

Thomas J. Stanley, 1944-2015

A generation ago, marketers of trust and investment services believed the ways to find wealthy prospects were obvious. Look for those with visibly high incomes. Target mailings to zip codes containing the most expensive homes. Watch for people who drove top-of-the-line Mercedes or threw lavish weddings for their daughters.

Then along came a professor from Georgia, brandishing research. The marketers had it wrong. 

Many big spenders were simply spending their big incomes, Thomas Stanley asserted, not accumulating wealth. Big hat, no cattle.

Many wealth accumulators, by contrast, shunned conspicuous consumption. They didn't act rich. They lived in ordinary houses, drove ordinary cars, wore ordinary clothes. They looked like the people next door.

Year after year, Stanley filled hotel ballrooms, delivering his contrarian message to gatherings of trust officers, brokers and investment advisers. In 1996 he and a colleague, William D. Danko, published  their bestseller, The Millionaire Next Door.

Both The Washington Post and The New York Times offer tributes to Stanley, who died recently in a car crash. William J. Bernstein, in his primer for millennial investors, calls The Millionaire Next Door "the most important book you'll ever read." 

Subconscious Influences on Financial Decisions

Do investors prefer stocks with pronounceable ticker symbols? 

How can people sense a dollar bill is fake even when they don't notice the bill is fake? 

I'm not sure TWTR, the symbol for Twitter shares, is perceived as unpronounceable. Nevertheless, Adam Alter's The Secret Science of Stock Symbols is a fascinating read.

An Eighteenth-Century Steve Jobs?

Thomas Bentley

A while back we called your attention to Josiah Wedgwood, the master marketer who may have invented direct mail. Regina Lee Blaszczyk suggests more credit be given to Wedgwood's partner:

In the 1760s, a backwoods British potter named Josiah Wedgwood joined big-city merchant Thomas Bentley and created one of the world's first design-driven companies. Wedgwood and Bentley were remarkably like [Steve] Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Inc. Wedgwood and Wozniak were both geeks with deep knowledge of the technology. Bentley and Jobs were design futurists who could imagine how consumers might respond to new products. 

Was it Thomas Bentley who thought of direct mail? In any case, he seems to have anticipated Jobs by opening a special Wedgwood store to sell the company's clean, modern designs.