My second guess is that the first commentor works at Bessemer.

I think I know more than the average reader about wealth management and private banking. I’ve written about the Swiss private banks on a number of occasions, and I’m certainly well aware of the ideas of corporate image advertising.

What struck me about the Bessemer ad was the use of a direct response mechanism, which isn’t usually part of corporate image advertising. And I do think there’s something striking about trawling for readers with at least $10 million to invest in today’s climate.

I’m not sure how you make your guess on 1% of NYT readers having $10 million to invest. 15,000 would mean a significant majority of people with that kind of wealth in the US read the NYT. I’m skeptical. Having a multi-million apartment and an income of far more than $123k would still get you nowhere near $10 million in assets to invest. There are plenty of New Yorkers and NYT readers with multiple millions in assets, but most are tied up in housing.

How does accumulating $10 million in investable assets deviate in any way from “today’s austerity”?

Remember: investable wealth by definition means savings – earnings that were not spent. $10 million is a typical minimum for the sector of wealth management that’s known as “private client banking.” Bessemer Trust is one of the better-known and established service providers in that niche. (Some firms set their minimum still higher, by the way.)

So, what is not austere about saving and investing? It’s what all our parents and grandparents (and for the younger among us, our great-grandparents) did during and after the last Depression, albeit on a smaller scale in most cases.

The assumption that the number of New York Times readers with $10 million to invest is “vanishingly small” is laughably naive, as well. I presume Mr. Knobel resides in Indiana, perhaps, or Alabama…somewhere far from New York City, where the median apartment still sells for upwards of $1 million and the minimum income needed to maintain a middle-class standard of living is $123,000 (according to a recent analysis by a widely respected organization, I don’t recall which one offhand).

My guess is the percentage of NY Times readers who could meet Bessemer’s minimum is on the order of 1%. Small, yes, but hardly “vanishingly small” – that’s 15,000 people.

It’s true that such people don’t pick up the phone to assign their millions to someone they learned about through a magazine ad.

I guess the oh-so-educated and sophisticated Mr. Knobel is a newbie not only when it comes to the concept of private banking, but also to the concept of corporate image advertising.