Response to: “Live From Chicago”
I would have written sooner, but I’ve been busy. I just returned from the Windy City, aptly named given the amount of balderdash and hot air being disseminated by many of the attendees, exhibitors and industry luminaries.
The facts are irrefutable. DMA attendance was down…dramatically. A surprisingly large number of DM companies pulled their DMA exhibit or just not showing up. The mail industry’s competing media are postal-bashing.
Bio-terrorism is real. Our distribution entity is coming out with a lot of feel good, generic rhetoric. And, one of the leading industry editors refers to our industry’s product as “junk mail”.
My answer to all this is real simple…”Grow up, get real and do something about it.”
Let’s start with the economy. OK, as you pointed out, we are in a soft economy. Unless someone took a trip to the moon for the past year and a half, this fact should have been on everyone’s radar screen. Business plans should have considered that and the guys/gals in the corner offices should have adjusted their business plans accordingly. We did. Good managers should have also had a “Plan B” to pull off the shelf if things got even worse. Alright, a fair number of middle managers and lower level folks did not attend. That’s the bad news. BUT…many key direct response decision makers were present and walked the exhibit hall, populated the seminars/workshops and made themselves available for “catch-up” with other industry people. In fact, we had a great show…even with historically low traffic.
Let’s peel back the layer of this attendance onion a bit more. A number of exhibitors bailed out of the show. Sure there were those companies that went “belly up”…some others were acquired. We understand that. What about the other on-going companies who just ran for shelter like the troglodytes of yore. One CEO from a venture capital funded Tennessee-based company came up to me all wired and selling up a storm. When I asked him why he wasn’t exhibiting, he said that he pulled his booth because there was no “ROI in it”. So what the heck was he doing there with some of his company’s employees?
Here is the headline…as a professional in this industry who is serious about its long term viability, we had an obligation to be there. Our company had to demonstrate support of our industry. We had to meet with those clients, prospects, competitors and suppliers who also had the intestinal fortitude to demonstrate that we are confident in our medium and industry.
Let’s talk about our fiends…oops, a Freudian blunder…friends in the newspaper, television and radio industries. We may even want to include those special breed of opportunistic bottom feeders in the Internet and telemarketing segments of our direct marketing industry. The newspaper and broadcast media have used the bio-terrorist attack on the postal system as a focal point for a mass campaign against postal marketing. You’ve read the headlines…MAIL SPREADS DISEASE…Postal Workers Die…The Mail Industry Is Going The Way Of The Railroad…yada, yada, yada. A bit self-serving considering the fact that direct marketing has delivered consistent sales growth and performance over broadcast and newspaper to those advertisers who know how to use it. If mail was so bad, why have newspapers gone to TMC mail programs that deliver advertising to the mailboxes of non-subscribers?
Why is it that many broadcast companies also have business units that market through the mail? The fact is mail works. Mail can be tracked. Forget the “buzz words du jour”…with mail there is accountability. No serious marketer in our industry focuses solely on image…the talk is the bottom line…what was the response rate? What was the conversion rate? How many dollars were generated? What was the return on investment? If “bio-foo-foo dust” was sprinkled in several issues of The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, would our industry come out and tell the world not to read the newspaper? Would we tell them to cancel their subscriptions? Hardly.
Before I forget, a number of Internet and telemarketing companies were talking up the fact that advertisers should use e-mail and telemarketing over mail programs…low blows to be sure. Haven’t they ever hear of carpel tunnel syndrome and tinnitus? One chap even came by my booth to explain why our sales force should sell his telemarketing services to alert consumers about forthcoming mail pieces in order to offset the decreasing response rate of direct mail! I call this “dance on your grave” marketing, so I responded by saying that we would let his company’s sales force sell our direct mail products. That way they could alert consumers that a telemarketer would call them during dinner or early in the morning as they were trying to get their children to school and leave for work.
Let’s get back to the facts. The current cry is that all mail is or may be contaminated. Where has the USPS been on educating the public? Where are our industry advocates? Where are our industry associations? During the DMA, a young lady from a Midwest agency came up to me at my booth and asked me if I was worried about the safety of this country’s mail system? I explained to her that probably more people will die during the first shift at Cook County hospital than would die from anthrax this year in the United States. I continued by informing her that all mail has not been the target of bio-terrorism. There have been no reported cases of suspected bio-contaminants in Standard A Mail, Express Mail, Priority Mail, parcels or Standard B Mail…only First Class Mail. I asked her how many mail packages she thought were contaminated. She thought it was several hundred. Rather than argue, I said, “Fine, let’s multiply that 200 number by 1,000 to equal about 200,000 potential bio-contaminated packages over the past four weeks”. I asked her if she knew how many millions of packages that the USPS processed in a four week time. Her guess was way low compared to the billions of mail pieces actually handled by the Post Office. My point was that 200,000 is a round off error to the total count of mail pieces handled by the USPS and the comparison number used was artificially high by a factor of one thousand. Simply stated, we need a public advocate who can set the record straight. Where was the USPS in setting the record straight? The Postal Service reacted slowly to the problem and when it did speak-up, it did so with a muted voice.
Where are our industry heroes? Where is our equivalent to Charlton Heston? By the by…Bob Wientzen gave a very fine accounting of himself at the DMA with a provocative and passionate presentation. Still, we are without a public point person who has the ability to take on the likes of Tom Brokaw, Andy Rooney and the other “talking heads” to demand equal time for our industry’s point of view.
Finally, as an industry we need to unite. Using the J-Mail phrase, even in jest, is wrong. Our leaders, advocates and industry members must speak with one credible and strong voice that says mail works, mail is safe and mail is important to our society and way of life.
Thanks for your patience in reading through this and I look forward to continuing to read your articles.
Fred Lederman
I certainly enjoy the comments and observations article you’ve been writing recently. I guess it makes the newsletter a little bit more personal and I guess that seems more important now.
Just wanted to make a comment about the show. I agree it was good being there. Bethesda List had a booth and we also considered whether to go or not. But we were not going to change the way we do business, so most of us from this small company were there. And we did good business! I had many appointments set- up for the three days I was there. 96% of my appointments showed and strategies for lots of future campaigns were discussed. I am going to be so busy following up those meetings! The best part of marketing is making all those “phone friends” and several showed up at my booth to meet me after all the phone business we worked this past year. Plenty of hugs and good wishes. I guess we were all glad to see each other still doing business normally and traveling with courage.
Rosemary Kroo, List Manager
Bethesda List Center, Inc.
Response to: “Junk Mail Lives”
Its bad enough that so many media “reporters” like tell the public that “junk mail is dying” or worse … is dead! But why do you have to cave in and also call the direct mail advertising medium, “junk”? I think we all take offense to name calling, no matter what the circumstance. So please don’t call direct mail advertising “junk” in any future piece, I might have to start calling your publication some name like…
Greg Harper
President
Harper Group LLC
Response to: “The Biggest Jackass in the State of Texas”
Remember when Florida “shot itself in the foot” over telemarketing years ago, and the DMA pulled our show? Florida learned, we came back and were treated well. Miami was certainly an easier show to “navigate” than Dallas. Let Texas limp along without us, and help Florida whose economic picture is bleak since the horror of Sept. 11.
Marti Berkowitz,
Luna III Direct,
Sarasota Florida
I read your coverage of the letter from John Greytok, Special Assistant A.G. in Texas to list brokers. I’ve spoken with Greytok and sent him two letters about his letter.
Greytok sent his letter to out-of-state brokers who could not even be prosecuted under Texas law because Texas would not have jurisdiction over these brokers. They lack the sufficient minimum contacts required under due process. In essence Greytok may be tortiously interfering with business relationships, and violating constitutional rights under color of state law, which could make him personally liable under 42 U.S.C. 1983.
Mark Fitzgibbons,
General Counsel,
American Target Advertising Inc. Manassas, VA
RE: Comment from Mr. Berns in Chicago: While I agree that the article needed to come out on Greytok, I agree with Mr. Berns that reference to a “jihad” in any other situation is totally inappropriate
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