Windows are too few in number to be used with indiscretion. The good merchant puts those goods back of his plate glass which nine people out of ten will want, once they have seen them.
The good advertiser tells about goods which nine readers out of ten will buy, if they can be convinced.
Newspaper space itself is only the window, just as the showcase is but a frame for merchandise pictures. A window on a crowded street, in the best neighborhood, where prosperous persons pass continually, is more desirable, than one in a cheap, sparsely settled neighborhood. An advertisement in a newspaper with the most readers and the most prosperous ones, possesses a great advantage over the same copy, in a medium circulating among persons who possess less means. It would be foolish for a shop to build its windows in an alley-way—and just as much so to put its advertising into newspapers which are distributed among “alley-dwellers.”
[How Alexander Untied the Knot]
How Alexander Untied the Knot
Alexander the Great was being shown the Gordian Knot. “It can't be untied,” they told him; “every man who tried to do so, failed.”
But Alexander was not discouraged because the rest had flunked. He simply realized that he would have to go at it in a different way. And instead of wasting time with his fingers, he drew his sword and slashed it apart.
Every day a great business general is shown some knot which has proven too much for his competitors, and he succeeds, because he finds a way to cut it. The fumbler has no show so long as there is a brother merchant who doesn't waste time trying to accomplish the impossible—who takes lessons from the failures about him and avoids the methods which were their downfall.