Hey, Let's Clear Some Inventory With an Idiots-Day Sale

There’s a good reason why marketers invoke David Ogilvy’s declaration that the consumer “is not a moron”: It’s hard to sell things to people with whom you have no fellow-feeling. Corporate executives’ esteem for the intelligence of their customers has its ups and downs, though. During the recent boom, CEOs and consumers shared a sense there was no limit to prosperity. Each cohort spent freely—the former for capital equipment, the latter for big houses and upmarket goods.