letters to the editor

Better Letters

At the risk of committing phariseeism and extending Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 12 commandments for sales letters to 150, I’d like to add three more (see Curmudgeon-at-Large, DIRECT, January). I know they’ll never get written in stone, but I can’t stop harping on them.

13. Using done for finished. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like a baked turkey when I’ve finished an assignment.

14. Using kid for child and kids for children. Sure, we’d all like the rest of the world to act like sheep, but these are people, for God’s sake.

15. Calling me guy or me and my companion guys. Whenever that gets into a sales letter, I invoke the wrath of Zeus on the writer.

OK, all you pharisees out there — what’s your beef?
J.D. Kinney
CEO
Dev.Kinney/MediaGraphics Inc.
Memphis, TN

Herschell Gordon Lewis’ January column is great, and one that every direct marketer should heed. Nothing bugs me more than to see an ad with typographical or grammatical errors. However, I would like to comment on Lewis’ sixth point: Using imposter for impostor is allegedly incorrect. After reading this I decided to consult a dictionary.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, imposter can be used for impostor.

Just wanted to let Lewis know that according to at least one dictionary, this is acceptable.
Emily Lyle Peters
Coordination and Production
Trigon Blue Cross/Blue Shield

Maven, Pro and Con

In DIRECT’s Nov. 15, 2001 issue one letter to the editor challenges a Tom Collins rewrite because (a) the ad wasn’t intended to get leads, and (b) the reader can always go to the Web site. I disagree with both points.

Point (a): Why wasn’t it designed to get leads — or at least to tell us how it works and why we should use Yahoo!? Image advertising may have bigger budgets and bigger agencies, but it’s often not the best way to spend a marketing investment.

There are still too many marketing and ad managers who are products of college courses that totally omit direct marketing, though it is often the better choice. Sort of like the geologist whose theory is challenged when he finds a rock that shouldn’t be at a certain level according to his theory, so he rolls it down the hill. In this case Tom’s more interesting, more informative, potentially more effective direct marketing ad is rolled down the hill because it isn’t an “image ad.” From a wider point of view, Yahoo’s! first mistake was in not calling for a direct marketing ad.

Point (b): Yes, they can always go to the Web site. And they could have made a toll-free call if the number was there. But why does the writer think that those who prefer to put down their magazine (which they may be reading on the train or in bed) and make a note to find Yahoo!’s Web site need less motivation than those who prefer other means of response? The reader still has to be “sold” at least on getting more information. Curiosity will never do as well as an aroused self-interest resulting from an understanding of benefits.

Yes, image shouldn’t be thrown away. But not all images are good. And certainly an unknown man speaking at a press conference neither builds on Yahoo’s! very clear image or adds to it.

Tom’s ad could have used a better layout, but that shortcoming doesn’t compare with Yahoo!’s ad, which needed everything.
Edward Nash
TeamNash Inc.
New York

I just happened on “The Makeover Maven” and encourage you to consider renaming it “The Makeover Moron.” So many times I have looked at this column and hoped that the Before and After shots were simply mislabeled. I am beginning to fear that Collins’ misguided ad reworks are not parodies after all. No respectable marketer would create an ad that looks like the intro page to a textbook, and no customer out there is going to read it.

Marketing in this economy is hard enough. If you want to provide a service, publish suggestions that will help attract customers, not repel them.
Patti Julius
Marketing Manager
Federal Sign

Tom Collins Replies

In response to the recent letters criticizing my Yahoo! Bill Pay makeover in the October issue of DIRECT (Op-ed, Nov. 15, 2001), I want to say I am a great believer in the power of brand advertising. I am in awe of what Juan Valdez and the Marlboro Man accomplished for their brands over the years. But they were for products whose buyers were best motivated not by any rational argument but rather simply by a feeling about the brand built up over time by the brand advertising.

When it comes to Yahoo!, what does brand advertising make you think or feel about it? That Yahoo!’s a search engine (if you realize that’s what it is) with a great sense of humor. Neither as a consumer nor as an advertiser would that be sufficient motivation for me. Especially since it’s not funny at all. Actually it is a very serious, intelligent search engine. The only thing humorous about it is its name and its advertising.

If the purpose of the advertising is not merely to build up a brand image (a very costly undertaking), then it should be devoted to getting the audience for it to do something, to respond in some profitable way. For my money, Yahoo!’s Bill Pay ad failed to do this, presenting neither a highly motivating brand image nor an effective argument based on sound direct response advertising principles.

Readers can “get the details” by going to the Web site? Not if they’re not sufficiently motivated by offline advertising to make the effort.

Yahoo! spent an estimated $26.9 million in the United States in measured media from January to August 2001. Third quarter revenue was down to $166 million, compared with $295 million in 2000. You can’t blame it all on the advertising, but boy, it sure doesn’t seem to have helped.

And if my makeover seemed a little homey to some, keep in mind that my budget was not $26.9 million but maybe $2.69.

Catalog/Online Synergy

A consistent refrain in reporting about catalog demand is the phrase “Company ABC said that catalog sales were disappointing during the holidays, but Internet sales were a bright spot, up X% over the prior year.”

A catalog is an advertising piece that drives demand to call centers, Web sites, fax machines and the U.S. Postal Service via mail orders. A Web site is still primarily an electronic order form. Yes, customers are acquired through the Web, but for most catalogers the vast majority come as a result of a catalog prospect mailing. Yes, the Internet is important and can enhance sales, but take away the catalog and there’s no “there” there.

When Internet demand is over projections, it’s generally because the migration rate from phone to Web was underestimated. A fair contrast would be to compare ordering channels (telephone vs. Internet vs. fax/mail) or advertising methods (catalog vs. e-mail vs. space advertising). For all intents and purposes Internet sales are catalog sales, the same way phone sales are catalog sales. This is not the case for all catalogs, but it certainly is for most.
Pete Rice
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Plow & Hearth

Be Wary of Partnerships

There is a lot happening in the world of loyalty marketing these days and readers need to be very careful when plotting their CRM and marketing moves. Rick Barlow’s articles “Making Change” and “Powerful Partnerships” (DIRECT, Nov. 15, 2001) open the door to what I have often called market-wide multi-merchant programs. They can work but the dynamics are difficult to organize and even more difficult to manage.

In “Powerful Partnerships” Barlow referenced the MeritValu program and noted it failed because of the lack of powerful players. He is only partially right.

MeritValu failed for two reasons: First, when Provident Bank’s management team went to the big players in Cincinnati they all loved the idea but wanted their names on the MeritValu card. The bank said no in spite of our counseling that it could have its own cards as part of the MeritValu ‘network.’ The bank always wanted to be top dog. The bank’s objective was to enroll more merchants in its transaction processing network and get more customers. (That objective clashed with the marketing goal of helping participating merchants build loyalty and sales.)

The second reason is that the MeritValu management team at the bank lost interest in managing a lot of merchants with a diverse set of marketing issues. Top management changed and the program ended.

Group 3 Marketing has developed two coalition-type programs. Both were tremendous learning experiences and in the end both died, not because they weren’t strategically sound but because the internal issues of the sponsoring companies outweighed the benefits the programs delivered. MeritValu had brilliant technology way ahead of its time but wouldn’t marry the right kind of marketing support to sustain it.

The second program was The Press Card, sponsored by the Omaha World Herald. This was a low-tech electronic program with good marketing but impatient publishers who were more worried about what direct marketing would do to the paper’s advertising revenue than they were about continuing to venture into what was then new marketing territory.

I would be very careful before venturing into coalitions and partnerships until the dynamics of all the players are fully understood.
Bart Foreman
Group 3 Marketing

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