Issue
#98 – Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Posted
by Denny Hatch
DENNY'S ENVELOPE DESIGN FOR
DONALD'S VOTE BUYING SCHEME
DONALD'S VOTE BUYING SCHEME
“The teaser on the envelope is the hot pants
on the hooker.”
—Bill Jayme
—Bill Jayme
Oh, what hot, hot pants!
The open rate would be 100%!
Okay, this envelope is obviously fake news.
It's not real.
I wrote and designed it.
My message to Fox News: "It's a
joke."
Maybe It's Not a Joke. I Believe Trump's
Campaign May Have Committed Mail Fraud.
Campaign May Have Committed Mail Fraud.
In late May 2020, the Trump campaign sent out
to millions of taxpayers a personal letter containing the same information you see on the fictitious envelope above.
Below is the actual outside envelope in which Trump's personal message was mailed to millions of taxpayers.
(NOTE:
John & Christine Williams and the address above are fictitious. The
mailing is real. I have one in my archive.)
What the hell is the
Treasury Department doing sending out a personal letter signed by Donald Trump from
The White House in an official Treasury Department OSE?
Below is Trump’s Mailing Received in a
Treasury Department Official Envelope.
Is This a Trump/Pence Campaign Mailing?
I have written on several
occasions that members of Congress are not allowed to make fundraising calls
nor talk about money with donors in their Capitol Hill offices. Instead, they
are forced to spend 4 hours every workday in an off-site phone bank pleading
for money. If they don’t raise $18,000 a day, they won’t be re-elected.
My question to the FEC: If a member of Congress is not allowed to make fund raising phone calls from his or her office, can the President of the United States send a fundraising letter to voters in an official Treasury Department envelope?
My question to the FEC: If a member of Congress is not allowed to make fund raising phone calls from his or her office, can the President of the United States send a fundraising letter to voters in an official Treasury Department envelope?
Technically Trump’s letter
is not a fundraising effort. It does not ask for money. It’s dispensing money.
Ergo, the campaign lawyers would argue, a fund-giving mailing cannot be
called a campaign effort.
Okay, I agree. It’s not a
fundraising mailing.
Let’s call it a vote-buying
mailing.
“Jeez, Honey, the President is sending us $833. The least we can do is say thank you
and vote for him.”
Hey! Why Not Cut Out Treasury and Send
Checks Directly from the White House!
Who
needs Steve Mnuchin as the middleman? Let's call a spade a spade. Make
damn sure all taxpayers know the money is coming from Sugar Daddy
Donald.
Hell's bells! Trump's name is printed on all the relief checks going out.
The scheme was dreamed up by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Here's the headline from the story in Forbes:
Mnuchin
Says Putting Trump’s Name On Stimulus Checks Was His Idea
Add
to the mix: Gerrymandering, voter suppression, eliminating
vote-by-Mail, failing to fund the Postal Service, drastically reducing
the number of voting machines, purging registered voters, Covid-19
spikes killing off voters, paying $3 trillion to voters in the name of the
president and...
Ladeez an' Germs, you have a winnah!
(BTW, the winner's initials are NOT J.B.)
Okay, Let an Old Direct Mail Guy
Gussy Up President Trump's Letter
This letter from the president has all the energy and warmth of a dunning notice for overdue taxes or a
blob of pigeon guano on the shoulder of your new Gucci jacket in St. Mark’s Square
in Venice.
The Trump campaign
operatives wanted the Williamses to read three paragraphs of drivel—201 dreary
words—before getting the BIG NEWS buried in paragraph 4 of the letter.
It's a nice letter from the
President—alerting John and Chris they are about to receive a chunk of cash and
to make sure they remember how wonderful The Dear Leader is.
But given all the
bureaucratic verbiage in the letter, millions of Americans no doubt never hung
in for the big news—that they were gonna get a hefty $833.85.
Sending a Business Letter to Joe and Jane Lunchbox?
These Are the Tested Rules of Written Communications.
•
“Currently, 45 million Americans are functionally illiterate and cannot read
above a fifth-grade level.”
—Literacy Project
•
“50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level.”
—Literacy
Project
•
“Short words! Short sentences! Short paragraphs!”
—Andrew
J. Byrne, Freelancer
• Don’t
use words with a lot of syllables, such as “experiencing,” “unprecedented,”
“determination” and “Administration.”
•
You don’t see words like these in tweets or texts. American attention spans are
too short to handle them.”
•
“Avoid gray walls of type.”
—David
Ogilvy
“A
letter should look and feel like a letter.”
—Dick Benson
—Dick Benson
(A Quick Aside on "Trump l'oeil")
Paintings that appear so real that they look like photographs are called “Trompe l’oeil”—French for “fool the eye.” If you want the reader of your letter to believe it’s the real thing—intimate, personal and actually signed by the sender—technology can do that for you. My verdict for this Trump l’oeil self-pat-on-the-back is that of the old carnival pitchman: “Close, but no cigar!”)
Paintings that appear so real that they look like photographs are called “Trompe l’oeil”—French for “fool the eye.” If you want the reader of your letter to believe it’s the real thing—intimate, personal and actually signed by the sender—technology can do that for you. My verdict for this Trump l’oeil self-pat-on-the-back is that of the old carnival pitchman: “Close, but no cigar!”)
Here’s
the Part of the Letter Where
The Trump l’oeil Crashes and Burns
The Trump l’oeil Crashes and Burns
• Up until the late 1970s, warm old-fashioned Courier type was standard for use in letters. They looked like the sender sat down at an old Remington typewriter and hand-typed it. When I was a clerk in the Army 1958-60, all the letters I typed for the senior officers to sign looked like this.
• Trump's letter is a serif font—probably a Times
Roman—okay in 2020—and in upper/lower case as it should be.
• However,
why are the names and address at the top (1) indented? And (2) all CAPS?
•
Plus, the teensy-weensy line of code at the top further destroys any sense of reality.
It’s obvious this text block is a machine-driven add-on that destroys the
personalization and wrecks any sense of intimacy or Trompe l’oeil.
•
In short, what could have been a warm, personal note from the president comes
across as a poorly personalized form letter by third-rate programmers.
•
The Bar Code under the name an address is obviously not hand typed. Alas it is
a necessary evil, since the letter comes in a window envelope. The bar code is
needed to show through the window in order to be compatible with the USPS
automatic sorters that guide it to the right address.
•
The salutation—“My Fellow American”—stinks.
—First
off, a “fellow” is a man or boy—hardly an appropriate salutation to a woman.
—If the computer can print JOHN AND
CHRISTINE WILLIAMS, a tiny tweak to the program—at no additional cost—could
insert:
Dear John &
Christine,
in
a matching font in upper/lower case. This is not rocket science!
•
The next thing that should catch the reader’s eye is a headline that telegraphs
what this letter is what this letter is about—in this case, the big bucks that
are being sent ($833.85).
•
In the gawd-awful world of Covid-19—layoffs from work, no income, home
detention, confused pets and antsy kids—the news of $833.85 coming soon is a
pants-wetter for many.
Here’s the Revised Letter Proclaiming the Good
News
As Tweaked by the Old Direct Mail Guy
Takeaways to Consider
• “The wickedest sin is
to run an ad without a headline.”
—David Ogilvy
—David Ogilvy
• Same thing with a direct
mail letter.
• The headline (or Johnson
box) is essential. It immediately makes the taxpayer feel good about Donald
Trump. Put another way, with no headline, a huge percentage of taxpayers who
have trouble reading will miss the point of the letter that the Trump team
hopes will translate into votes.
• Worse, they might
completely miss receiving the cash. I damn near chucked out our debit
card. It was a lumpy envelope and I assumed it was sales pitch for AAA or AAARP. Thank goodness Peggy opened it.
• I left the body copy of
the original letter alone. This is what Trump operatives sweated over. Yes,
it’s tedious as hell and yet another self-serving paean. But given the reported
fragility of egos in the White House, I would not want to monkey with it.
• Something I have never
seen before: The reverse of the letter was absolutely the same—complete with
all the personalization—with one difference. It was in Spanish.
• In short, the small
changes from the original letter would cost nothing. They are simple
programming and copy tweaks that would turn it into a letter that looks and
feels like a letter.
• I have often said all businesses—from lone wolf
consultants and fulfillment departments to Chairmen & CEOs of
multi-national corporations—should have access to the services of a seasoned,
sensitive direct marketing copywriter to look over their shoulders and tidy up
crappy copy to prospects, customers, subscribers and inquiries.
###
Word Count:1425
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