Issue #36 - Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Posted
by Denny Hatch
From 42 Years
Ago: A Glorious Antidote
To the Poisons of Washington, D.C.
To the Poisons of Washington, D.C.
This is the story of a remarkable sales
letter that pulled in over 600,000 subscribers to a new magazine... continually
beat the best efforts of the industry’s top writers for more than four years...
and most astonishingly, was written by a man who never attempted a direct mail
solicitation before or since.
—DH
—DH
==============
In 1984, Robert
Shnayerson agreed to an interview, and we met in a midtown Manhattan
apartment-office. He came in nattily dressed, with a full head of silvering
hair that made him look a decade younger than his 56 years. Right away he set
the scene of the times.
Early in 1976, a bloody civil war was
raging in Beirut; every night television news was parading a series of
decapitated bodies through America’s living rooms in full color. The country
was just coming out of shock from Vietnam and Watergate. In a political aberration, the voters had
rejected the Establishment candidate in favor of a Georgia peanut farmer [Jimmy
Carter].
Shnayerson’s own life was a shambles. He
had just resigned from Harper’s magazine after new management had done violence
to all he had achieved there. His beloved wife of 23 years had recently died.
And he was realizing more and more that he had spent his entire career as an
editor “contributing to the misery of the world.” He was ripe for change.
Robert Beahan Shnayerson
(b. 1925)
By coincidence, as he was leaving Harper’s,
Shnayerson was approached by a magazine consultant—Arthur Murphy, formerly of
Time Incorporated—who had a client interested in starting a new magazine.
Shnayerson listened, and liked what he heard—the possibility of a magazine that
was upbeat for a change, an elegantly produced a publication that dealt with
excellence, achievement and hope, but at the same time, one that “would not be
sappy.” Best of all, he would have carte blanche in the running of it, and
there was plenty of money to get the thing going.
Shnayerson went back to his apartment, and
on his old Remington typewriter in the bedroom wrote out the prospectus for the
new magazine. It was accepted. Agreements were signed promising Shnayerson and
his staff a free hand. All systems were go. For a man who describes himself as
“a congenital, deep-dyed Irish pessimist,” these were heady times.
Magazine consultant Jack Ladd was hired to
do the computer modeling and get the publication launched, and one of his early
dictums sounded vaguely like the Claude Rains’ line in the last scene in
Casablanca: “round up the usual copywriters.”
Several world-class freelancers were
brought in to create the launch mailings for subscriber acquisition. In
Shnayerson’s eyes, the efforts did not capture what QUEST/77 was all about. And
he was right; those initial test mailings did not work.
Shnayerson asked if it would be all right
if he took a shot writing at his own letter. The consultants, marketing
professionals and circulation people winked and smirked—smug in the knowledge
that editors never beat the professionals—told him to go ahead.
Starting with his original prospectus,
Shnayerson went back to his old Remington and began to spill his guts. Here is
his six-page letter, printed on high-quality 6” x 9” tan stationery with the
big Quest/77 logo and address in the upper right corner of page 1.
“I’m Robert Shnayerson, editor of
QUEST/77 -- a new magazine for closet
optimists, people who suspect the
world is NOT going to hell. You’re
invited to become a Charter Subscriber,
receive the premier issue and save 25%
while you're at it.”
Dear Reader:
For 20 years I helped edit
three of the world’s best magazines: Time, Life, and Harper’s. Last summer, after five years as editor-in-chief
of Harper’s, I took a hard look at my profession.
Journalism had trained me
to assume that every day in every way, things were getting worse and
worse. I enjoyed that
notion. Yet all around me was contrary
evidence. New life-styles, inventions, works
of art, world records. The quiet heroism
of ordinary people coping, healing, teaching.
The unknown best and brightest in a billion corners of the earth --
unknown because good news isn’t news.
I’m tired of journalistic
myopia. Fed up with publications that
appeal to our worst instincts. Let other
editors drag readers through cesspools of mediocrity. I’m interested in people as they really are
-- and could become.
So I’m starting a new
magazine about the pursuit of excellence -- the search for the fully lived
life, yours as well as mine.
A Fresh Look at Ourselves
QUEST/77 offers a fresh
look at the human condition. It takes a
sophisticated stand against fashionable despair and disengagement. With drama, humor and zest, it argues that happiness
lies in expending ourselves for a good purpose.
It brings us back to life, back to our senses, the full use of our
minds, bodies and emotions. It asks: Who
among us is admirable and why? What in
our lives is still wonderful, worth celebrating, still excellent?
QUEST/77 is the first
magazine to focus directly on mankind’s possibilities with all the wit, clarity
and sensibility that this great subject demands. A superb-looking bimonthly -- stitched at the
spine like a fine book, crisp, elegant, richly illustrated in color -- it
combines the literary quality of the New Yorker, the exciting
photographs of Life and the lush graphics of Audubon. It appeals to every person who wants to
excel, every person in quest of the larger self that lurks within.
QUEST/77 won’t promise to
make you healthy, wealthy or wise; beautiful, strong or sexy. It won’t claim to do for you what only you
can do for yourself. It will show
you the best in everything from art to humor, science to sports, It will leave
you exhilarated by your own possibilities, or at least enchanted
by the performances of others:
• Gifted people in
demanding occupations:
athletes, scientists,
novelists, actors, inventors, painters, surgeons, explorers -- not excluding
feisty eccentrics who create their own worlds.
• Gallant people who
personify life, spirit and substance. Free people who value
excellence for its own sake ahead of fame, money or safety. Honest people who
refuse to cheat, sell out or betray themselves. Joyful people who seize life
and never settle for second best.
• All people, famous or
obscure, whose achievements bolster our courage, advance our knowledge,
delight our minds and refresh the human spirit.
QUEST/77 relishes
adventure. Epic rescues. Solo voyages.
Treasure hunts. Business
comebacks. Mystical experiences. It reveals the human stories behind great
inventions like the transistor. It introduces a Japanese daredevil who plans to
dog-sled alone across the Antarctic.
Tells you about other quixotic characters who keep trying to fly the
Atlantic in balloons. It explores the
most remote frontiers of human potential, from genetic engineering to space
colonization.
An Examination of Life
QUEST/77 celebrates grace
under pressure. The examined life is one
of its constant themes. Who among us is
astoundingly immune to fear, hate, envy moral cowardice? What accounts for the agelessness of some
beautiful women and great old men? In
our pages you’ll read the moving words of a dying painter who spurned easy
money in favor of artistic freedom.
You’ll meet all sorts of people who survived life crises, public
ordeals, imprisonment, falls from wealth or power. People who’ve hit bottom and
bounced back, setting examples of resilience for all of us.
QUEST/77 asks the world’s
finest writers and photographers to describe things they honestly admire,
preferably on the basis of personal experience.
All kinds of things: ideas, places, crafts, rituals and customs;
examples of artistic integrity, moral courage and intellectual elegance.
We’ll print informed
opinions about the “best” wines, beaches and airlines -- as well as the “best”
poets, philosophers and presidents.
We’ll give you practical information about sex, health, food and
children. At the same time, we’ll demand
the highest standards of taste, writing and performance.
We’ll apply rigorous
critical judgment not only to books and films, but also to new fads, laws,
buildings, scientific discoveries, political speeches, peace treaties, athletic
performances and Supreme Court decisions.
We’ll “review” such things in order to explain why they’re excellent or
how they could have been. We will seize
every opportunity to draw distinctions and puncture nonsense. We will unabashedly separate the best from
the worst in all callings, trades and objects.
First Issue: A Collector’s Item
The first issue of
QUEST/77 will appear in February 1977 and I’m determined to make it so
memorable that you’ll be torn between displaying it on your coffee table as a
collector’s item -- and cutting it to pieces to send clippings to your
friends. In the pages of this premier
issue and those to follow you will find:
• Spectacular pictures and
firsthand reports by eleven young Americans who climbed Mount Everest and wrote
about it exclusively for QUEST/77.
• A special 16-page
section on Courage.
• World famous
photographer W. Eugene Smith analyzes his 10 best photographs...six top
American artists revealing their favorite painting and how it influenced
them...Sam Keene: are humans inherently evil or potentially good?...a salty
British adventurer’s incredible sailboat trip across South America...Loren
Eisley: the difference between holy and unholy science...Green Liberation: how
ex-city women are faring on the land as self-subsistent farmers... J. B. Rhine
on his 50 year search for ESP...the inside story of America’s five women
airline pilots...Lox with Love: how to run a great delicatessen...a photo essay
on Seattle, the nation’s most livable city...profile of a master teacher:
Robert Penn Warren...the next Guinness Book of World Records telling us the
latest human accomplishments.
• Plus: Max Lerner on
Thomas Jefferson, America’s only philosopher-king...Frederick Busch: a day in
the life of a country pediatrician...George Plimpton on the art of football coaching...the
adventures of two English girls who canoed down the Congo River alone...Stan
Lee on why he invented Spider man...Paul Goldberger: America’s 10 best designed
buildings...Mark Vonnegut on megavitimin therapy for mental illness...Richard
L. Rubenstein on what torture does to torturers...Richard Ford: The world’s
best fly rod maker... Sam Posey: Why I Quit Auto Racing...James Cameron on
living with a bad heart...Harold Schoenberg: how to raise a musical
prodigy...John Cole on living in a solar house...Edward Luttwak on the pursuit
of excellence in elite military units, from British Commandos to the Israeli
raiders in Uganda.
• Plus: Fiction by Cynthia
Ozick, Tom Boyle, Roberta Silman, Paul West, Gerald Jonas, Martha
Saxton...Poetry by John Updike...Book Reviews by William Saroyan, George V.
Higgins, Margaret Drabble, Richard Poirier, Leslie Fiedler, Victor Navasky,
Murray Kempton, Anthony Sampson, Maxine Kumin, John Gardner, Joy Williams, Gary
Wills.
QUEST/77 may awe you --
achievement does that -- but it will never bore you, never preach windy
sermons. It will be realistic, specific,
entertaining -- full of lively writing, great pictures, good thinking and a
sense of playfulness.
If you’re ready for a new
magazine that talks up to its readers, not down to them...embodies the
excellence it pursues...provides a relief from slackness and slobbism...makes
you feel larger, not smaller...then you’re ready for QUEST/77.
Charter Subscriber Privileges
On newsstands, QUEST/77
will cost $2.00 a copy or $12.00 for the six issues. But when you reserve Charter Privileges in
advance by mailing back the enclosed card now, you gain in these valuable ways:
Immediate Cash Savings. Instead of
$12.-- your rate is just $9.00. Right
away, you’re ahead $3.00 -- a savings of 25%.
Perpetual Savings. You’re
guaranteed preferential rates in perpetuity -- always the lowest possible price
on renewals and on any and all gift subscriptions.
Volume I, Number One. Your
subscription starts with the premier edition -- the issue most prized by
collectors, most likely to increase in value.
Full Refund Guarantee. If ever QUEST/77 lets you down, just cancel and
get all your money back -- a full refund of 100% of your current subscription.
PLEASE DO NOT SEND MONEY
NOW. We prefer that you hold off payment
until you’ve had a chance to assess the premier issue. To see for yourself whether it delivers what
it promises.
But don’t hold off your
reservation. We’ll be printing only so many copies of our
Volume I, Number One issue -- no more. To avoid disappointment or delay, the
enclosed reply form should bear the earliest possible postmark -- today’s if at
all convenient. Many thanks!
Cordially Yours,
/s/ Robert
Shnayerson
Robert Shnayerson
Editor
The letter broke
every rule in the book. Start with the lede or Johnson Box (the section above
the salutation, a visual device reportedly invented by the great freelance
copywriter Frank Johnson).
“I’m Robert Shnayerson, editor of QUEST/77 --
Having read thousands of mailings from 1984
through 1987, I cannot remember one long-term control that started with
“I.” According to Axel Andersson, who
has analyzed the Johnson Box of more than 300 successful direct mail letters,
the most common word is “you”; never “I.”
Bob Hacker’s operative rule here:
The
consumer doesn’t give a damn about you, your company
or your product. All that matters is, “What’s in it for me?”
or your product. All that matters is, “What’s in it for me?”
Yes, many
exceptions exist to Hacker’s, such as Martin Conroy’s 25-year control for The Wall Street Journal which brought in close to $1.5 billion in subscription revenues. Conroy’s lead:
Dear
Reader,
On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years
ago, two young men graduated from the same college.
They were very much alike, these two young men...
ago, two young men graduated from the same college.
They were very much alike, these two young men...
In analyzing this
masterpiece, Hacker pointed out that where the typical magazine offer hits hard
on product and price, Conroy had adapted a technique used by fund raisers who
involve the reader in a powerful story. Fr. Bruce Ritter of Covenant House used this technique in his
“dirty lady” letter.
Dear Friend,
A lady should never get this dirty, she said.
She stood there with a quiet, proud dignity. She was
incomparably dirty -- her face and hand smeared, her
clothes torn and soiled. The lady was 11.
Dear Friend,
A lady should never get this dirty, she said.
She stood there with a quiet, proud dignity. She was
incomparably dirty -- her face and hand smeared, her
clothes torn and soiled. The lady was 11.
Yet, Shnayerson plunges ahead, with prose
buoyed by his enthusiasm and absolute belief in what he is doing. And clearly,
the letter is coming from Shanyerson, so it does seem personalized and you
suspend disbelief.
Other Broken Rules
• Long
paragraphs that create “gray walls” of type.
• Preachy copy.
(e.g., “I’m tired of journalistic myopia.”
“Fed up with publications that appeal to our worst instincts.”
“Let other editors drag readers through cesspools of
“Fed up with publications that appeal to our worst instincts.”
“Let other editors drag readers through cesspools of
mediocrity”).
This is reminiscent of Jimmy Carter telling the country we
were all were suffering from a general “malaise.”
• Much of the
copy is more cerebral than emotional (e.g.,
“The examined life is one of itsconstant themes.” “Who among
us is astoundingly immune to fear, hate, envy, moral
cowardice?...”).
“The examined life is one of itsconstant themes.” “Who among
us is astoundingly immune to fear, hate, envy, moral
cowardice?...”).
• The letter is
full of “it” copy (“It introduces...” “It reveals...”
“It will be realistic...”).
“It will be realistic...”).
Letters are supposed to be full of “you”
copy, not “it” copy.
• The letter must be quickly scannable: that is a reader should
get the gist of the proposition by reading the (1) eyebrow,
(2) lede paragraph, (3) crossheads, (4) wrapup, (5) P.S. If
not, send it back for surgery, because without a strongly
integrated skeleton the body of the argument will slump.
—Malcolm Decker.
(2) lede paragraph, (3) crossheads, (4) wrapup, (5) P.S. If
not, send it back for surgery, because without a strongly
integrated skeleton the body of the argument will slump.
—Malcolm Decker.
•The QUEST/77 letter is
emphatically not scannable or easy
to read.
to read.
• Shnayerson compares QUEST/77 to other magazines—
(“it combines the literary quality of the New Yorker, the
exciting photographs of Life and the lush graphics of
Audubon...”)
(“it combines the literary quality of the New Yorker, the
exciting photographs of Life and the lush graphics of
Audubon...”)
• Generally, you want to stay away from talking about the
competition; it’s imperative the prospect focuses on your
benefits rather than those of others.
• A direct mail
letter with no P.S. is inconceivable.
• Always include a P.S., say experts. It can restate the
guarantee, premium offer, or major benefit or make a
provocative point that kicks the reader back into the letter.
Use a hanging indent—the entire message is positioned
to the right of the P. and S. —Don Hauptman
Wow.
The letter pulled an astonishing 6%. (Success in direct mail is typically 2% response.) By Shnayerson’s own
admission, the promotional copy was better than the first issues of the
magazine itself; where the magazine was slick and glossy, the letter had an
earthiness that gave voice to the feelings of those who received it.
Over the next four years, a
string of tests went against it, written and designed by top guns in the
industry. Meanwhile, Shnayerson’s control went through many variations: a
sweepstakes... even a hokey computerized version... as well as new copy tests.
But for all the tests and razzle dazzle
against it—like the cat in the old folk song—the original letter kept coming
back, its raw emotion and bold honesty simply overpowering the
competition.
“Even today it still mystifies me,” Shnayerson said, “why those top guys couldn’t beat it.”
“Even today it still mystifies me,” Shnayerson said, “why those top guys couldn’t beat it.”
In retrospect it’s obvious why the
professionals kept losing. Quite simply, Shnayerson was a good writer who had
become totally involved in his product and passionately believed in it. And when that kind of
involvement and passion burns through a piece of copy with such literate
ferocity, you can chuck all the old rules right out the window.
No
one could beat Shnayerson!
The Demise
Three years
later the magazine was called QUEST/80. The
mailings had come full circle and were back to the original invitational size
“I’m Robert Shnayerson...”
The Rapp & Collins Agency was hired to come up with some new marketing concepts. They began talking about a Quest Award for people who did outstanding things and trying to build it into something akin to the Academy Awards.
The
Giraffe Society
Instead, Shnayerson came up with the "Giraffe Society" to honor those people who weren’t
afraid to stick their necks out. He created a special issue devoted to 25
people who had stuck their necks out in the past year.
What’s
more, he invited readers to become members of the society for $2 each, and to
nominate people they knew who had stuck out their necks. From among 350,000
subscribers came an immediate $30,000 cash, 15,000 applications for membership
and an avalanche of letters, every one of them as passionate and earthy and
moving as Shnayerson’s original. That was an unheard of 4.3% response to a casual cash-with-order offer! He had found an extraordinary constituency of
Americans yearning for excellence long before “In Search of Excellence” became
a catch phrase.
But in November of 1980 the whole
thing blew up. According to Shnayerson, the magazine’s backers—The Worldwide
Church of God, a Christian fundamentalist organization headquartered in
Pasadena, California, who had originally promised complete hands-off treatment—now began to exert editorial pressure. Shnayerson and his staff quit.
Advertising dried up, and the magazine died several months later.
Takeaways to Consider
• Bob Shnayerson had two problems with QUEST/77: He was
probably ahead of his time and he
obviously had the wrong backer.
• Reread his
1977 letter and see if it doesn’t resonate with just as much power some 42 years
later.
I’m tired of journalistic myopia.
Fed up with publications
that appeal to our worst instincts. Let other editors drag
readers through cesspools of mediocrity. I’m interested in
people as they really are -- and could become.
that appeal to our worst instincts. Let other editors drag
readers through cesspools of mediocrity. I’m interested in
people as they really are -- and could become.
Dissatisfaction
with the media today is rampant. Everyone
knew what Donald Trump was and elected him anyway (thanks to an estimated $3
billion free coverage by the ratings-crazed lamestream media).
Congress
is an embarrassment.
Bob Shnayerson got it right; the
politicians and talking heads today have it wrong. He was able to get inside
the heads of the people he was writing to and talk directly and
conversationally with them. And relate to them in a powerful way that
resonated in the deep heart’s core. Okay, Donald Trump's speeches and tweets resonate with his private electorate—the hardcore one-third underclass.
I believe the majority of us are desperate for a
publication like QUEST/19 today.
• Bob Shnayerson said it best to me when I interviewed him:
I
believe if you’re gong to be the editor of a new magazine,
you—the editor—must try to write your own direct mail
letter, even if you’re a terrible writer. You have to think
through what this magazine is... what the benefits are to
the subscriber... and then write a 4- or 6-page letter with
all the passion and intensity of your last will and
you—the editor—must try to write your own direct mail
letter, even if you’re a terrible writer. You have to think
through what this magazine is... what the benefits are to
the subscriber... and then write a 4- or 6-page letter with
all the passion and intensity of your last will and
testament,
as though it were going to be carved in stone
and signed with your blood.
and signed with your blood.
Even though this letter may never be mailed,
you will
have created a document that your circulation copywriters,
your advertising promotion people and your editors can work
from. It’s an absolutely essential step in any magazine start-up.
have created a document that your circulation copywriters,
your advertising promotion people and your editors can work
from. It’s an absolutely essential step in any magazine start-up.
So, Why Limit This Concept to magazines?
Logic dictates this would be an invaluable exercise no matter
what the product or service—consumer, business or fund raising.
• Whether you’re
a banker with a new mortgage offer... and insurance underwriter with a new
policy... a product manager with a new piece of merchandise... a merchandise
manager with a new catalog.... a fund raiser with a new cause... or a broker
with a new investment opportunity... you should sit down—however painful it may
be—and write your own deeply felt “I’m Robert Shnayerson...” letter to serve as your
credo, constitution, wiring diagram and marching orders for everyone involved
in the project.
• Who knows...
you might find yourself with a winning promotion (mail, space ad or digital) that beats all the so-called
“experts”—just as Bob Shnayerson did!
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