Loose Cannon: Cads and Grads

Despite the direct marketing industry’s $2.7 trillion contribution to the United States economy, you can count the number of DMers invited to speak at college graduations on one hand – and the number of DM reporters on one finger, if that.

Because of this, another year will pass without my delivering the following graduation address to a sea of freshly scrubbed, hung-over, mortarboard-shaded faces.

To the Graduating Class of 2006:

I hope every one of you has received at least one gift certificate as a graduation present. In the best of all possible worlds, these would have been solicited via phone from a company with whom your loved ones have an established business relationship, purchased online and sent to you through the mail. This sort of activity nourishes the direct marketing industry, and the healthier it is, the more likely I’ll have a job covering it come next graduation season.

I realize most of you would prefer a car over a gift certificate. But since few of your parents are likely to purchase a car for you using a direct response channel, I cannot condone such a desire. The reason your parents will not use DM to purchase a new car for you is that, by and large, they have gone into hock financing your education. For this reason, they aren’t going to put you in a vehicle bought from Cars-R-Us.com. They will buy something safe and reliable from a live human being. This will give them someone to scream at, should something go wrong.

They will make this purchase with an eye toward a key direct marketing metric: Return on investment. Once your parents reach their dotage, they will expect their investment in your education to pay off handsomely. There is a direct correlation between the amount of education debt on your parents’ names and the number of airbags in your new car.

For those of you who avoided taking any classes in direct marketing during the last four years, let this be the first cold, hard lesson in return on investment. It won’t be the last. For while your academic career may be over, your DM education is just beginning.

To truly appreciate direct marketing’s power, you need only to wait six months or so: Just when you realize how long paying off your education loans on an entry-level salary will take, your alma mater will start bombarding you with pleas for your spare change. The six-figure education they nicked you for was the start: For your school, your post-graduation contributions are where the real ROI comes in.

Every campus activity you enrolled in, every Greek organization you joined, every residence hall you lived in and every class you took will be marshaled in an effort to separate you from your paychecks.

These solicitations will come via the mail. They will come via the telephone. They will come via e-mail, especially for those of you who choose to keep your academic e-mail addresses.

Switching to Google’s Gmail or Yahoo! Mail systems sounds pretty good right now, doesn’t it?

Some of you may receive personal solicitation notes from classmates. Because they knew you, they will be able to play emotional cards most direct marketers can only dream of. A few will doubtless have extensive blackmail material on you, which is a tool also denied DMers.

When you receive these missives, remember why your former classmates are engaging in this activity. They, too, have education debts to pay off and have doubtless been promised a cut of the action by the alumni fundraising department. And bear the following in mind, as well: The reality of the last four years was nowhere near as glorious as these solicitations will paint them.

I’d say caveat emptor, but a) you have already bought your educations and b) few of you took Latin. Either way, it’s too late now.

About the only thing that will get you off this post-commencement sucker list is the phrase “I just took an unpaid internship.” But the development folks at most colleges are barracudas, and this ploy will buy you no more than another six months’ grace.

Class of 2006, I sincerely hope you enjoyed your time at this institute of higher learning. Because from here on, your alma mater is going to remind you of it at every possible opportunity.

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