Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
This ad for an Illy espresso coffee home-delivery program is more like the former than the latter.
In his landmark book, “Being Direct,” Lester Wunderman devoted a whole chapter to the dramatic story of how he and his agency people used direct marketing thinking to build wildly successful direct distribution for Gevalia Kaffe, a little-known Swedish coffee brand.
The program launched in 1983 with brilliant ads written by Jackie Stern, one of Wunderman's star DM copywriters. The ads romanced the story of Gevalia's origins as the obsession of master coffee roaster Victor Theodor Engwall in the Swedish seaport town of Gavle, and how the king of Sweden was so impressed that he appointed Engwall's Gevalia company as royal coffee purveyor.
A free coffeemaker was offered as an inducement to sign up for monthly shipment. The effort was so successful that by 1997 an estimated $10 million a year was being spent on advertising, which in turn was generating $150 million a year in sales. So naturally Kraft Foods, Gevalia's owner, decided to move away from direct to store distribution and convert it to a retail brand. Thus began the long, slow process of forgetting everything Gevalia had learned.
Now Illy USA apparently is trying to follow in Gevalia's footsteps with its own home-delivery program, or what Lester Wunderman called “automatic replenishment.” But if the program's designers had read Lester's Gevalia story, which they certainly should have, they missed one of the most important points: the powerful appeal of the product's romantic origins.
Every advertised brand wants to make you believe it's the best. But the Gevalia story did make you believe it. Illy had a similar opportunity. It, too, had an appealing product story. But the ad fails to tell it. Like Gevalia, Illy's historical roots can be traced to a master coffee taster and roaster in a seaport — in this case Trieste, Italy. But Illy's ad wastes a great part of its precious space on a huge display of three Illy coffee cans. The rest is devoted to typical brand-advertising typography spelling out the details of Illy's home-delivery plan.
No romantic appeal. No selling copy devoted to why Illy coffee is better, or why members should spend “only” $500 for a home espresso machine. It's possible that the people at Illy fell into the trap of thinking, “Everybody already knows how great Illy is, so there's no reason to tell them.” Anybody can try direct marketing, but to succeed you've got to think like a direct marketer. It looks like it didn't happen here.
An outstanding DMer named Alan Rosenspan once worked for the master, David Ogilvy. In his moving eulogy at an Ogilvy memorial gathering, he recalled that “David was one of the first great proponents of direct marketing. He called it ‘My first love and my secret weapon.’
“He once gave a speech in France that began: ‘There is a yawning chasm between you generalists and we directs. We directs belong to a different world. Your gods are not our gods. You pride yourselves on being creative — whatever that awful word means. You cultivate the mystique of creativity. Some of you are pretentious poseurs. We humble people who work in direct do not regard advertising as an art form. Our clients don't give a damn whether we win awards at Cannes. They pay us to sell their products. Nothing else.’”
I have often said that many topnotch journalists do a better job of selling what they write about than many ad writers. So for my makeover I searched for and found an excellent journalistic statement, and used that for the headline and copy. The ad has to appeal to people who are nuts about perfect coffee if they're going to be asked to spend so much for their own espresso machine. 
My makeover seeks to achieve what the original ad failed to do — making targeted prospects really want the coffee and the espresso machine.
I can't know without testing what the best offer might be. It's a tough problem. Illy couldn't take Gevalia's tack and give away the machine in exchange for a commitment. The coffeemaker is just too expensive.
I have a hunch that the answer lies in an affordable, flat monthly membership fee (say $45) and automatic monthly credit card billing — sufficient to cover the coffee, machine, advertising and profit if continued long enough.
Then it would be possible to say to coffee fanatics, “Isn't it worth $1.50 a day to you to be able to have and serve authentic, fresh-brewed perfect espresso at home any time?”
THOMAS L. COLLINS (thomas.l.collins@verizon.net) has been a direct marketing copywriter, admaker, agency creative director and co-author of four books on marketing. He is currently an independent creative and marketing consultant based in Portland, OR.
