People were pushing each other on the curb and trying to get a glimpse of the window.
“What does it say?”
“It sounds like a real live stock.”
“I’m gonna invest, that’s for sure.”
In 1920, a bank manager named I. Webster Baker posted a giant ad in the window of the Guardian Savings & Trust Co. of Cleveland, Ohio.
The ad was clearly a joke.
It was so outlandish and ridiculous that no sane person could think it was real.
But just to be sure, Baker posted a sign, written in large letters, under his ad. The sign read:
“Some gullible people will try to buy this stock. It is a foolish joke, of course, but no more foolish than many ‘wildcat’ schemes being promoted to-day. Investigate before investing. Don’t hand your money over to any unknown glib-tongued salesman.”
And yet…
Passersby stopped on the street to read the ad.
Some saw the sign below the ad and moved on, chuckling to themselves.
But others took their place. A crowd started to form. A gold rush feeling was crackling in the air.
People started pushing into the bank.
“Say, where can I get more information on that California Ranching stock that’s being advertised in the window?”
“Oh that stock isn’t anything,” said the bank assistant with a twinkle in her eye. “We have other, better stocks you might like to invest in.”
“But I don’t want other stocks! I want that one in the window.”
Such is the power of gullibility, or if you’re feeling less kind, of human greed.
Serious men, business men, doctors, lawyers, stock brokers, all responded to the California Ranching Company ad.
They did so both when the ad appeared in the window of the Guardian Savings & Trust Co., and on numerous other occasions, when the ad popped up in small-town newspapers across the U.S.
These men wanted a chance, as one investor said, “to turn an honest nickel into an honest dollar overnight.”
The gruesome nature of the advertised business, and the impossible promise of 100%, non-stop profit, didn’t keep these men from rushing in with cash in hand, and yelling, “HERE, take my money!”
At the Cleveland bank, what they got is disappointment. What they got in the case of the newspaper ads were scams that made their money disappear.
Maybe you’d like to see the original ad.
Maybe you’re curious about the business of the California Ranching Company.
Or maybe you’d like to study how this ad did its thing, so you can apply some of the same ideas to a less gruesome, more realistic business.
You can find the ad below. But before you read it, make sure you invest in a free subscription to my email newsletter, while opportunity knocks at your door.
