He sat at his desk and looked down at the bag.
“Now, that,” he thought, “is good advertising.
“You see that and you remember it. You don’t forget something like that … the look of it, nor the message of it. For it is”—he thought of the word and wondered if it, in fact, existed, and, in the spirit of the object which he examined, elected boldly to employ it whether or no.
“It is proclamative,” he thought. “Proclamatory. Unabashed, and I like it like that.”
On the desk was an old bank bag of heavy burlap. Ten by fifteen inches, the corners reinforced with coarse, heavy leather.
It closed with a drawstring sewn through the short end, and the drawstring ends drawn through a toggle the size of a poker chip. When the bag filled, the toggle would be pushed up against the bag, the string would be knotted tight up against it, and the knot sealed with wax. The toggle was of ocher gutta-percha. Pressed into it was the image of a hanged man and the motto “Wells Fargo Never Forgets.”
“I would believe it,” he thought. “I would believe it; and, were I of a criminal bent, I would choose to exercise it upon some other concern. That is the power of advertising. To induce or persuade to forgo the process of deliberation and suggest there is a higher method of arriving at a solution—a more immediate and a better method. That is the power of advertising.”