Feeding the baby rabbits
Andrew Carnegie was the founder of the United States Steel Corporation. He started out as a poor immigrant but ended becoming one the richest Americans in history.
When Andrew was a boy back in Dunfermline, Scotland, 1845, he had two pets, a male and a female rabbit.
One morning, Andrew woke up and found that he had a nest of baby rabbits. But the Carnegie's were so poor that Andrew didn't have any food to feed the baby rabbits.
That was when he had his eureka moment.
Andrew gathered a bunch of little boys and girls in the neighborhood. He needed their help to search for food to feed the baby rabbits.
But instead of just talking about what he wanted, he focused on what these little boys and girls wanted.
If they went out every day and picked enough food to feed the baby bunnies, Andrew would name the bunnies in their honor.
The plan worked brilliantly, and Andrew never forgot it.
Decades later, Andrew Carnegie made a fortune in the steel industry by using the same psychology principle, over and over again.
Andrew became so powerful he was nicknamed the "King of Steel".
Yet the truth is that Andrew didn't know much about the manufacture of steel. But he knew how to deal with people. He knew how to win cooperation.
There’s a famous story about when Andrew wanted to sell steel rails to the Pennsylvania Railroad. J.Edgar Thomson was the President of Pennsylvania Railroad. So Andrew built a biiiiig steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He called it the 'Edgar Thomson Steel Works'.
After that, whenever Pennsylvania Railroad needed steel rails, can you guess where J. Edgar Thomson bought them?
If you work in advertising/marketing be more like Andrew Carnegie. Always focus on what your audience wants.
Your pal,
Miguel Ferreira
Founder & Chief Copywriter, Teardwn + Nishi + Jack Had A Groove FM
P.S. It's official. I've just rebranded my newsletter as Creative Samba and moved it from Mailchimp to Substack. This newsletter started as part of a side project called Nishi (created in 2018), but the newsletter just grew a life of its own. Now it's its own separate thingy so you can have a better reading experience. Creative Samba is like my Nishi newsletter, but better. It's more like a newsletter that has a website as an archive of bite-sized stories about the power of creativity to solve business problems.
What the heck is Creative Samba? Thought provoking, surprising and fun bite-sized stories about the power of creativity to solve business problems. 300 words max. Written by Miguel Ferreira and delivered to your inbox every Monday.