(Welcome to Loose Cannon, a staff-written editorial focusing on issues of interest to the direct marketing community. To respond to this week's editorial via e-mail, please send your message to rlevey@primediabusiness.com.)
It was a beautiful wedding, held on a clear day in mid-October, with a couple designed to warm the hearts of marketers.
The groom is a direct mail copywriter. The bride’s maiden name was an anagram of "mail list." And the event was in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, barely a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The date had been set long before the invitations went out in mid-summer. But following the attacks the bride and groom realized guests needed to hear that celebrating the couple’s union wouldn’t diminish the horror of Sept. 11.
And so the groom, with help from his future mother-in-law (for whom the wedding was never in question), drafted a letter to all 180 people that had been invited.
Dear Friends:
While it is hard to think about celebrating in the wake of the recent attacks on New York and Washington, we hope our upcoming wedding represents a bright spot on your calendar. We know many of you will now find it harder to travel to here. And many will still be feeling the effects of the tragedy as well as the joy of the wedding. We thank all of you who can join us.
We would also like you to know that, in lieu of a wedding gift, we would be honored if you wish to make a contribution to the rescue/relief effort of your choice.
Love [the bride and groom]
New Yorkers made their donations directly, with most of them choosing either the New York Times Most Neediest or Sept. 11 funds. Out-of-towners sent checks directly to the couple, asking that they be turned over to whichever charities were appropriate.
"The idea was to acknowledge that people were having strong reactions to what was a horrible loss of life, and to try to acknowledge what we were all going through, and to say ‘nevertheless we are sticking with our plan,’" the groom later said.
Only two guests stayed away: a couple from Memphis that had planned to take a private plane into New York City but were too shaken by the attacks to fly.
And the bride and groom, who enter into the New Year as newlyweds, have shown that not all direct mail returns can be measured in dollars and cents.
Happy 2002.
