SFR 282: The 2nd Millionaire In America

This is one of my favorite, brilliant marketing stories!

 

I’ve just finished another 20-mile bike ride (in the dark)…

 

I'm still several miles from home, but my mind's kinda spinning, so I thought I'd stop and…

 

• Drop kinda a cool story about PT Barnum that involves a dead monkey and a fishtail… (Yep, that BT Barnum… and Nope, it’s NOT in the film 😉) 

 

• Tell you WHY Sales Funnel Radio will be ending soon! 

 

#SHOCK!

 

MAKING MARKETING HISTORY!

 

I LOVE studying yesteryear's marketing gurus. I’ve been going back to the 1700s and 1800s…

 

I've been kind of obsessed with studying how these old, rich, dead marketers got their messages out before the internet.

 

...because we live in a very different world. 

 

And while the internet is beautiful, it’s largely a crutch…

 

And it’s a HUGE distraction if you don't understand what marketing truly is. 

 

To illustrate my point, I’m gonna tell you a story of a guy named PT Barnum.

 

You’ve probably have heard of PT Barnum from the movie, The Greatest Showman, which is … 

 

1. A largely made up by Hollywood.

 

1. A great movie. 

 

Most of what’s in the movie is NOT true.

 

PT Barnum did have a circus, but it was his retirement project.

 

Barnum was older when he started that circus, but the movie makes it seem like he had this young struggling family and that it was the circus that made him... 

 

That's NOT at all true.

 

However, PT Barnum was a brilliant, brilliant guy, and he died in 1891 at 81 years old and by that time, 

I believe he was the second millionaire in America… he was definitely the first show business millionaire in America.

A million dollars was waaay more back then than it is now, it was pretty impressive to have a million dollars at that time.

 

HUMBUGS & A PRE-INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY

 

Barnum loved doing hoaxes, or as he called them, ‘humbugs’ for the public. 

 

And there's a lot of famous quotes from him about that...

 

I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right. - P. T. Barnum

 

One of the MOST famous hoaxes that Barnums well-known for is the Feejee Mermaid.

 

The Feejee Mermaid was widely known in the1800s as being one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled off. 

 

Barnum was famous for saying something to the effect of, ‘The world wants to be fooled, so let it be fooled.’

 

The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it. - P. T. Barnum 

 

So Barnum would play these tricks on the public and his sales would increase…

 

And so long as he over-delivered on value, he found that nobody really cared that they were hoaxes.. 

 

Now, I'm not here to say whether or not that's right or wrong. 

 

I personally don't think that's right. 

 

Don't lie…

 

However, there's a lot you can learn from the brilliance of what Barnum did. 

 

And I wanna share a really fascinating story on what I believe true marketing is if you remove the internet…

 

It's kind of a funny episode, it's a cold dark night, and I'm in a Staples parking lot… 

 

(Who says marketing isn’t glamorous? 😉)

 

*CHECK IT OUT*

 

But back to the story!

 

THE FEEJEE MERMAID

 

Barnum had this museum in New York and most of his income came from this museum of crazy stuff, NOT the circus. 

 

AND…

 

When in the mid-1850s, ‘a mermaid was caught off of the coast of Feejee’(#QuoteUnquote) it was brought to PT Barnum to see if he wanted to put it in his museum. 

 

It was literally a monkey's body that they had been sewn onto a fish, and it's kind of morbid.

 

But Barnum decided that he could use the ‘mermaid’ to create a cool buzz! 

 

So he grabbed all of these naturalists to declare, "This is a true Mermaid from Fiji." 

 

Now, anyone looking at the ‘mermaid’ could tell that it was fake…

 

So Barnum asked experienced naturalists until finally, he had a naturalist who would declare:

 

"This is a real mermaid." 

 

Then he took *that story* and ran with it. 

 

He and one of his associates started sending letters to the newspaper from various locations. 

 

His associate acted as a doctor and they started “leaking” quote after quote of interactions they were having about the Feejee  Mermaid and how spectacular it was to the press.

 

They sent them from anonymous locations throughout the city and the nation. 

 

The press was like:

 

 "Oh my gosh, we're getting all these letters about this incredible Feejee Mermaid.

 

 Look at this correspondence between this doctor and PT Barnum the museum owner.”

 

It was completely fake. 

 

However, when they’d created enough buzz, the fake doctor took a trip from New York down to Philadelphia o ‘business’  and brought the Feejee Mermaid with him. 

 

They did their Dream 100 homework and chose a hotel where the owner was friends with a bunch of newspaper editors. 

 

Dr. J. Griffin (fake doctor, fake name)... checks into this hotel and as a thank you for letting him stay, he promises to let the hotel owner see the Feejee Mermaid. 

 

The hotel owner goes, "Oh my gosh. That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. Do you mind if I bring some of my friends over?". 

 

Q: Guess who his friends were? 

<...