Stop Acting Rich: . . . And Start Living Like a Real Millionaire

Chapter 5. Keeping Up with Your Spirits

	I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds, and fast cars; the rest I just squandered.
	--George Best

My mentor, the distinguished professor of marketing Dr. Bill Darden, often told his graduate students:

Get ready to compete in the marketplace with some real talent. The really brilliant ones in America don't work for the State Department. Not even in medical science labs. The great minds are working in marketing, designing ways of ... convincing us that one brand of a hemorrhoid remedy is superior to another ... that one wash detergent will produce whiter whites—thus assuring Mom will continue to be loved and admired by her husband and kids.

He was quite serious when saying this.

If Bill were still with us today and we could ask him to evaluate the marketing efforts associated with the liquor industry, he would likely tell us that, clearly, some of the best of the very best minds in America are at work marketing liquor. How else can one explain it? You take a colorless commodity, call it alcohol, flavor it, perhaps color it, age it, and convince people to pay over $100 for a bottle of something that could otherwise be had for $10. This is genius.

Bill told us something else. If you want to understand people and their brand selection habits, study the outliers, not the average consumers. One category of outlier is composed of people with money who live well below their means. Why are they insensitive to all the marketing propaganda and advertising ...