We’ve all had a few laughs about Ben Franklin making the DMA Hall of Fame after more than 200 years. Dave Florence, the other 2004 inductee, has been asked many times just how well he knew Ben.
Some critics see Franklin’s selection as cynical, others as goofy, and the timing does seem a little odd. But if the DMA had done this when it was founded in 1917 nobody would’ve thought twice about the decision.
Franklin qualifies as a pioneering direct marketer, based on the available historical evidence. For example, he published a “Catalogue of Choice and Valuable Books,” and assured mail order buyers that they could count on “the same justice as if present.”
Of course, other businessmen also offered such guarantees (they had to get people to trust the mails), but Franklin did so much more than that. He ran a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and a general store, using one to advertise the products sold in the other. (“The widow READ…continues to make and sell her well-known ointment for the ITCH.”) More importantly, he improved the primitive postal network.
In Colonial times, letters traveled by ship, sometimes taking months to arrive, or were carried by riders who rode when they pleased and expected to be bribed for any services they rendered. Franklin had to bribe them to deliver the Pennsylvania Gazette, and with good reason: The local postmaster, Andrew Bradford, who competed against Franklin as both printer and publisher, had ordered his riders not to carry the Gazette.
That insult prompted Franklin to seek Bradford’s job, and he got it in 1737. Then he showed what a big man he really was. He opened up the local mails to all periodicals, even Bradford’s, although it failed to do the latter any good. “My old Competitor’s newspaper declin’d proportionately, and I was satisfy’d without retaliating his Refusal, while Postmaster, to permit my Papers being carried by the Riders,” he wrote in his autobiography.
In 1753 Franklin was named co-postmaster general, “one of the very rare civil functions which concerned all of the colonies,” according to historian Bernard Fay. He reduced delivery times, in part by deploying night riders, and ran the whole network on a profitable basis. In 1774, after being sacked by the Crown, he created a parallel system — the foundation of the U.S. Post Office.
So Ben deserves his place on the wall. Another historical figure who does is Montgomery Blair, who overhauled the post office during the Lincoln administration.
How do you avoid the ridicule that Ben’s selection drew?
It’s simple. Create a couple of categories: One for contemporaries, another for what we might call the Founders. There are many who have not been named, and their accomplishments reflect well on direct marketing.
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