The Blue Bills

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, no man could watch his advertising work and had to find out by other means. You have better instruments than he had and the same difficulty.

Two spectacle makers in the old town, the same shop front, the same trays of lenses, the same four pounds a year spent on being heard of.
Both advertised four ways: the county paper, handbills in the villages, a board at the fair, a line in the directory.
One asked every customer where he had heard of him, and wrote the answers down.
One asked nobody, and altered one small thing in each of the four.
By spring, one had stopped paying for two things that did nothing, and the other paid for all four.
Same four pounds, same four places. What had the second man altered?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is spectacles. A sight trial at the back of the shop, lenses tried one after another until the card at arm's length comes clear, then frames bent to the head over a spirit lamp. A trade that lives on being thought of by a man who has begun to hold his newspaper further away than he used to.

Both spent four pounds a year on being heard of, in the same four places. Two pounds went on a standing notice in the county paper. Nine shillings printed six hundred handbills, left in the villages on market mornings. Fifteen shillings bought a board at the autumn fair. The rest went on a line in the directory, renewed each year because it always had been.

The first spectacle maker was no fool and no idler. He did what a careful man does, which is to ask. Every customer in his chair was asked, pleasantly, where he had heard of the shop, and the answer went into a ruled book by the till. At the year's end the book put the paper well ahead of the rest, as he had always supposed, it being the dearest of the four and the one he could show his brother-in-law. So he gave it another pound and took that pound off his handbills.

The second spectacle maker asked nobody anything. He gave each of the four a different errand for the reader instead. The paper notice said to cut it out and bring it, and the trial would be free. The handbills were printed on blue paper with the price list on the back, and said to bring the bill. The fair board said to ask for the case to be put in. The directory said to write for the reading card, which came by post.

Then he counted, which took an hour in January. Forty-one blue bills had crossed his counter. Seventeen had written for the reading card. Nine cuttings out of the paper, two of them in one week and both from one village.

So nine shillings of handbills had brought forty-one, two pounds of newspaper nine, and fifteen shillings of fair board a cousin and his wife. He stopped the board, cut the paper notice to a quarter, and had three thousand blue bills printed. The directory, renewed out of habit for eleven years, turned out to be quietly the second best thing he owned.

One more detail, because it is the whole letter in miniature. A householder sat in the first man's chair that autumn and told him, in good faith, that she had seen him in the paper. She had a blue handbill in her apron pocket, out of her kitchen drawer, its price list read twice. She had never looked at the paper in her life.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

An advertisement you cannot tell apart from your others at the moment the reply arrives has taught you nothing, whatever it brought in, so put the label inside the reply rather than asking the customer to supply it afterwards. The reply is your only honest witness, and it testifies to nothing unless you arrange beforehand for it to carry its own name.

Consider what you ask when you ask a customer where he heard of you. An act of memory about a thing he was not attending to, six weeks after the fact, while he sits in front of you wishing to be agreeable. He cannot do it, so he hands you whatever feels true, which is generally the grandest source he can name. I have written before about asking people a question they cannot answer, and this is that error in a different hat. The fault is not in his honesty but in the question.

Understand too why a total is no use. Four pounds brought sixty-nine enquiries, and that figure is the same whether three pounds of it was wasted or none. A sum you cannot divide is one you cannot act on, and a man who knows only his total must decide out of his own preferences, which is how the dearest and most respectable of the four comes by the extra pound. Count place by place and the till settles it, as two jars of peas once settled another argument.

There are four ways to key a thing and you have all four already. Something to bring. Something to ask for by name. Somewhere different to write or ring. Or differently worded instructions, so their own words come back to you. Keep the four alike in value, or you will learn which offer is strongest and nothing about which place is, having spent a season answering a question you never asked.

Two cautions. Every hoop loses somebody, so make the key a thing the reader wants to keep anyway, as the blue bill was also the price list, and never treat a man who has mislaid his bill as though he had no claim on you. The key is for your counting, not a condition of trade. And mind small numbers. Twelve enquiries divided four ways is an anecdote, not a measurement, so let it run a season before cutting anything, and count the money as well as the enquiries, since the place that sends the most people can perfectly well send the worst.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. If I stopped one of the places I advertise tomorrow, would I know by Christmas? If the answer is that trade would be up or down, you are not measuring. You are watching weather.
2. What does each of my places ask the reader to do? Write the sentences side by side. If every one says come in or get in touch, every reply you receive is unsigned.
3. Of my last twenty enquiries, how many can I name the source of without guessing? That number, over twenty, is the share of your advertising money you are able to spend on purpose.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same four pounds, same four places. What had the second man altered?

Not a word of his advertising and not a penny of his money. He altered the reply. Each of the four asked for a different thing to be brought, asked for or written for, so every enquiry arrived saying where it came from. The first man asked sixty-nine people a question none could answer, believed the answers because he had written them down himself, and gave another pound to the weakest thing he owned.

The verse:

Ask a man in March where he heard of you in autumn,
He will give you back the grandest name he knows,
But a blue bill on your counter has no memory to trouble,
And it tells you, without asking, where it came from and what it cost.

Until next time. Go and alter one of the places you advertise today, so the next reply it brings arrives carrying its own name.

P.S. Keys teach a second thing nobody warns you of, which is the length of the wait. The bill that crossed the counter in March was printed in September and spent the winter in a drawer. A man judging his handbills a fortnight after giving them out would have called them a failure and been wrong by six months. You cannot know the lag of your trade until your replies can tell you their age.

Also in the archive: The Chandler's Two Jars, What They Did, Not Why and The Six Channels.