Smile, Shake, Sell

Like a broken traffic light that shows both red and green, U.S. banks are glutted with savings, while their loan departments report a sharp fall-off in new business. Last week President Charles H. Brower of Manhattan's Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne stepped into the money jam, whistled up an adman's notion of creating motion. Advertising has the job of awakening desire, said hard-selling Charlie Brower to an American Bankers Association meeting in Chicago. His advice: let bankers quickly borrow some advertising techniques.

"There is no bad selling, just lazy selling," Brower warned the bankers, and laid out three simple rules:

First. Find your best customers. "Are you telling women about your consumer credit facilities? Are you getting your message to the young families of middle income who buy most of the appliances? Are you hitting them at the right time--spring housecleaning time, vacation time?"

Second. Make borrowing both moral and fun. "Why should the borrower have to feel embarrassed about a loan? It is nothing but schizophrenia that makes installment buying of life [things needed now] immoral and installment buying of death [life insurance] moral. And I'd like to see the lending man get up from his desk and smile and shake hands with the prospective borrower, no matter how poor a credit risk he appeared to be."

Third. Take a tip from supermarkets. "Mark your aisles and your departments clearly with names the consumer understands. Then he won't have to sidle up to the man with the gun and whisper: 'Where can I get a loan?' Display what you have to sell, not money itself, but what money can buy. I doubt that even the most enticing display of $100 bills would persuade one man or woman to rent your money, but a display of air conditioners might."

Concluded Adman Brower: "If we are to break the present economic log jam, you installment-credit bankers and we in advertising must do it by working together.'' Bankers should disregard the idea that the U.S. consumer is being worked on by "hidden persuaders" and needs protection from admen. That, said Brower, is rubbish. "I don't think the so-called 'hidden persuaders' are able to persuade him to do much of anything that he doesn't already want to do anyway."

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