Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [18]
To capture public interest and build circulation, Grozier was not above employing carnival tactics, organizing a stream of inspired and slightly wacky promotions. He heard that an Englishman and his wife wanted to rid themselves of three trained elephants named Mollie, Waddy, and Tony. Grozier thought they would make ideal residents at the city’s Franklin Park Zoo. He was making enough money by this point that he could have paid for them himself and reaped all sorts of praise, but instead the Post called upon the children of Boston to become part owners of the pachyderms. The newspaper began collecting contributions toward the $15,000 purchase price. Grozier promised to print the names of every one of the contributors, even those who could spare only a cent or two. Thousands of children responded, and seventy thousand people turned out to welcome the elephants at a ceremony in Fenway Park, built two years earlier by the Globe’s Taylor as the new home of the Red Sox. From a simple profit-loss standpoint, it was a disaster. It cost the Post thirty cents, based on its advertising rate, to print the name of a child who had contributed a penny, and the newspaper still had to cough up several thousand dollars to close the deal. But Grozier knew it was a huge success.
“Every child who had given even one cent wanted to see his name in the paper, and was thrilled by the thought that he owned part of an elephant,” Grozier told a reporter. “Of course, it added thousands to the circulation of the Post, but it was a gain that was based not on appealing to the worst elements in human nature but to the best: to civic pride, to generosity, to interest in animals, to the affection of parents for their children. And so it helped us to win liking and affection.”
Later, the Post announced a giveaway of a free car for the best human-interest story: A FORD A DAY GIVEN AWAY! the paper screamed. Thousands of suggestions poured in, and scores of Model T’s were delivered. The paper printed photos of women only from the neck down, then offered ten dollars in gold to any woman who could identify herself and prove it by wearing the same outfit to the Post offices. They came in droves, and thousands more grabbed the paper each day hoping to recognize their headless selves. Another time, Grozier hired a movie scout named Bijou Fernandez to search for girls who wanted to be in the movies. Fernandez would spot a pretty girl in a small town and a Post reporter would write a story that would be printed alongside the girl’s picture. Circulation shot up by ten thousand the first week, though actual movie offers were scarce. Tapping into the same vein, the paper ran a feature called “The Prettiest Women in History,” featuring luminaries including Cleopatra and Helen of Troy.
Barely a day went by without some kind of promotion or gimmick. Once, Grozier announced that he was sending a reporter incognito to a certain part of the city. The paper would give one hundred dollars in cash to the first person who spoke these words to the reporter: “Good morning, have you read the Post today?” Suddenly those were the first words out of Bostonians’ mouths whenever they happened upon a stranger.
Then there was the “primitive man” stunt. The Post sent a man named Joe Knowles into the Maine woods, naked and empty-handed, to live completely alone for sixty days. During the two-month adventure, the paper printed dispatches and drawings Knowles made with charcoal on birch bark and left at a prearranged drop point. When Knowles emerged from the woods, wearing deer skins and carrying the tools of a caveman, some 400,000 people crammed the length of Washington Street to greet him. The paper’s circulation