For a great example of an empty boogeyman quote aimed at smearing the pro-marketing opposition look no further than Todd Paglia, executive director of environmental group ForestEthics.
Paglia was featured in a recent Washington Post article on how the U.S. Postal Service has so far been able to help stop misguided efforts at establishing state and national do-not-mail lists.
“The Postal Service has come in and clobbered legislators,” said Paglia, according to the Post, which noted ForestEthics has collected 289,000 signatures on an online petition to Congress that calls for a National Do Not Mail Registry. “It’s really a people-versus-special interest kind of battle.”
Special interests? Now there’s an intellectually vacant term. It means anything the person using it wants to outlaw, regulate or tax the crap out of, but has yet been unable to do so to his or her satisfaction.
Message to Paglia: All interests trying to get government to either do something or leave them alone are “special interests,” including you and your group.
Let’s consider a few numbers in comparison to the 289,000 signatures ForestEthics has been able to gather, shall we? Keep in mind that using a nice viral e-mail, we could probably get 289,000 people to sign a petition urging Congress to keep me in beer and cigars for life.
The United States Postal Service employs 680,000 people. And make no mistake, Christmas cards to Aunt Betty aren’t paying the freight here. Direct mail is.
Meanwhile, non-catalog direct mail employed 2.8 million people in 2007 and drove $536.7 billion—that’s billion with a “b”—in sales, according to the Direct Marketing Association.
Catalog direct marketing employed 793,000 people in 2007 and drove $150 billion in sales, the DMA contends.
Direct mail accounts for only 2.4% in weight of the total municipal solid waste generated in the U.S. annually, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That figure is also likely to decline as paper recycling efforts improve.
In 2006, a record 53.4% of the paper consumed in the U.S.—53.5 million tons—was recovered for recycling.
The amount of U.S. forestland today is about the same as it was in the early 1900s, despite our population tripling and “forest inventory” in the U.S. has grown by 39% since 1952, according to the U.S. Forest Service
The paper industry claims it plants more trees each year than it harvests.
Annual net growth of U.S. forests is 36% higher than the volume of annual tree removals, according to the Society of American Foresters. The vast majority of the paper produced in America today comes from trees that are grown as managed crops for that specific purpose.
More than 36% of the fiber used to make new paper products in the U.S. comes from recycled sources and more than 80% of U.S. paper makers use recovered fiber to manufacture new paper products, according to the American Forest and Paper Association.
Open letter to ForestEthics: You know those government services you count on so much? You know, cops, fire fighters, national highways, getting your streets plowed and your kids educated? They are all the result of the fact that people sell stuff to each other and create tax revenue. No sales: No tax revenue. It really is that simple.
Oh, and all that affordable wonderful stuff you buy every day that makes your lifestyle the cushiest in the history of the world? It’s because people advertise, market and sell things to each other.
If it weren’t for advertising, marketing and sales, at best you’d be living in caves, speaking in grunts, and digging through the mud for grubs. More likely, you’d be in a gulag.
Now, the people who sell stuff would love to be able to deliver their sales pitches telepathically only to people with a 100% propensity to buy—after all, they don’t like wasting their money either—but they simply haven’t figured out a way to do that yet.
So they have to be able to communicate with prospects through channels that don’t involve invisible mind waves.
Go figure.
Plus, if your do-not-mail idea extends to non-profits, it would kill them. Bye-bye Special Olympics. So long Feed the Children. Bet you didn’t think of that, did you?
We could exempt them, you say? Why sure. Non-profits and politicians. Congress always lets itself off the hook with this sort of thing.
But then we really don’t have a do-not mail list at all, do we? We have a screw-merchants-because-we-just-don’t-like-advertising-or-people-who-do-things-solely-for-profit list.
Let’s at least call it what it is.
