Denny Hatch's Marketing Blog: May 2023

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

#188 - WaPo/Times Schemes

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2023/05/188-wapotimes-schemes.html

#188 Blog Post - Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Posted by Denny Hatch

The Circulation Jackasses of The

Washington Post and The New York Times

One day last month — in the fifth year of reading The Washington Post (a.k.a. WaPo) on my iPad very early every morning — this huge ad you see above covered the daily landing page and cut me off from the news and commentary I paid for. The message: “Resubscribe and get unlimited access blah… blah… blah…”

Resubscribe? I am a paid subscriber. I never received a notice saying it was time to renew for another year. I clicked all over the place trying to get my news. No dice. The Washington Post would not allow me to access the day’s news and commentary.

Resubscribe? I didn’t dare. If I signed up, I would have two subscriptions. Look at the strange last three lines:

Already a subscriber?

Sign into a different account or

Restore subscription

“Already a subscriber?" I am.

“Sign into a different account or Restore subscription.”

Huh? What different account? I only have one account with these people.

Okay, I said to myself. I guess my subscription had lapsed and I plumb missed the renewal series.

The following two days I tried to read The Washington Post and discovered it was “Groundhog Day.” No access.

As founder and editor of WHO’S MAILING WHAT! Peggy and I were deep into the renewal business. This was our life’s blood. Without renewals we wouldn’t have a business.

Did I let my subscription lapse?

Last week I searched online for the WaPo circulation department. I found a “Contact” link and roused an instant chat person. My question: “When is my subscription up for renewal?” The return answer on 11 May 2023:

Let me assist you, Denny.

Our records indicate that you are currently signed up for an All-Access subscription associated with your email address dennyhatch@yahoo.com

Your account is set to renew on 09/08/2023 at the standard rate of $120.00 for 52 weeks.

(Bold red type in the message above is my doing for emphasis.)

After a week of no access to news, I gave up and deleted the WaPo App icon. I get major Washington Post stories on Apple News plus I get the daily e-edition of The New York Times.

Why didn’t I Immediately Call

Or e-mail WaPo Circ People?

I’m 88 years old. Time on this planet gets more and more precious the longer I live. Frankly I did not want to get into a pissing match with a twenty-something smarty-pants (or mini-skirted) untutored circ clerk. I subscribe to Apple News, and I have been a subscriber to The New York Times for over 60 years. I’m also a regular viewer of CNN and MSNBC. Plus, I get Axios, Bo Sacks, Mr. Magazine and other news and newsletters. In short, I don’t need WaPo to be in touch with the world.

Here's The Washington Post’s Offer Sheet

I have never seen anything like this in my life.

1. Look at upper left above. WaPo was trying to get me to resubscribe and sell me “All-Access Digital” for $11.99/month.

2. “Let me assist you, Denny.

Our records indicate that you are currently signed up for an All-Access subscription associated with your email address”

dennyhatch@yahoo.com

—WaPo Chat person to Denny Hatch

WaPo’s Bizarre “Premium Digital” offer:

Try 1 month free

(then $16.99 a month)

and pay through the nose forever after. No description of the products. Another $60 a year. No benefits. No reviews of the e-books or testimonials from happy users. Not one iota of warmth or fun. Here are the products. Here are the prices. Buy ‘em, Bub.

Holy Moly! The New York Times Pulled a Copycat Stunt Using the Very Same Words as WaPo!

Did the Times and WaPo Use the Same Copywriter?

WaPo: All-Access Digital

Come Back and Get the Full Experience

vs.

NYT: The New York Times | All Access

Upgrade and Enjoy the

Complete Times Experience.

Note: Unlike WaPo — who completely cut me off — I am still allowed to read the Times. Oh Thank you, thank you, A.G. Sulzberger. How long will this last?

The two identical messages infuriated me. These up-selling offers were classic stupidity on the part of the two newspapers' circ departments that had no clue how to talk to customers.

Look at it this way. Both papers originally persuaded me to buy their digital contents. I paid their bills and assumed I was getting "All-Access" to the news and features.

Uh-uh.

The Times held back goodies — e.g., recipes and puzzles. They gypped me — conned me into thinking I had bought the contents, when, it turns out, they kept me from seeing everything. If I order these extras and pay for them… only then will I have the “Complete Times Experience.”

Recipes? Peggy is a marvelous cook. Pay extra for games and puzzles? Nah.

BTW, digital subscribers are the most profitable customers.

Think of it: no cost of paper, no ink, no printing, no folding, no delivery, no dead trees. I paid $100 a year for the e-WaPo. The raw cost-of-goods was oh, maybe, a nickel a year for teensy spritzes of electricity.

Takeaways to Consider

• “The most important order you get from a customer is the second order.” —Maxwell Sackheim (founder of Book-of-the-Month).

• The second order means the buyer liked your product or service and came back for more. Multi-buyers are what all businesses strive for. In the case of a publication, the second order is the renewal.

• BTW, if you rent your lists be sure to add a premium/M for multi-buyers.

• “Direct marketing should be scrupulously honest.”

—Dick Benson, legendary consultant and marketer

• “Dealing with a customer is like making love to a widow. You can’t overdo it.”

—Franklin Watts (My second employer in 1962)

• “God protect me from amateurs!”

—Henry Castor (another early boss)

###

Word count: 1001

292pp     6" x 9"
Hardcover:   $39.95
Paperback:   $29.95
ebook/Kindle: $19.95

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Method-Marketing-Denison-Hatch/dp/1648372767/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=method+marketing&qid=1681898276&sr=8-9

Barnes & Noble

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/method-marketing-denison-hatch/1100485178?ean=9781648372766

At age 15, Denny Hatch—as a lowly apprentice—wrote his first news release for a Connecticut summer theater. To his astonishment it ran verbatim in The Middletown Press. He was instantly hooked on writing. After a two-year stint in the U.S. Army (1958-60), Denny had nine jobs in his first 12 years in business. He was fired from five of them and went on to save two businesses and start three others. One of his businesses—WHO’S MAILING WHAT! newsletter and archive service founded in 1984—revolutionized the science of how to measure the success of competitors’ direct mail. In the past 55 years he has been a book club director, magazine publisher, advertising copywriter/designer, editor, journalist and marketing consultant. He is the author of four published novels and seven books on business and marketing.

CONTACT
dennyhatch@yahoo.com

Note to Readers:
May I send you an alert when each new blog is posted? If so, kindly give me the okay by sending your First Name, Last Name and email to dennyhatch@yahoo.com. I guarantee your personal information will not be shared with anyone at any time for any reason. The blog is a free service. No cost. No risk. No obligation. Cancel any time. I look forward to being in touch!

IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE POSTING A COMMENT… EMAIL ME! I'LL HELP!
Google owns Blogspot.com and this Comment Section. If you do not have a Google account — or if you find it too damn complicated — contact me directly and I will happily post your comment with a note that this is per your permission. Thank you and do keep in touch. dennyhatch@yahoo.com

Invitation to Marketers and Direct Marketers:
Guest Blog Posts Are Welcome.
If you have a marketing story to tell, case history, concept to propose or a memoir, give a shout. I’ll get right back to you. I am: dennyhatch@yahoo.com
215-644-9526 (rings on my desk).

You Are Invited to Join the Discussion.

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

#187 School Shootings

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2023/05/187-school-shootings.html

#187 Blog Post - Tuesday, 2 May 2023

Posted by Denny Hatch

A Direct Marketer Takes Aim at the Gun Lobby

With a Sincere Attempt to "Save the Children."

This photograph is typical of how Congress, local politicians, guns and ammo manufacturers, the NRA, gun owners and the media want Americans to believe what classroom shootings are really like.

The sanitized message of the Gun Lobby: The dead children are in a happy place — in heaven playing with stuffed Teddy bears hugging little bunny rabbits among colorful flowers. All are having a loving and lovely time together.

The Backgrounder That Triggered
This Long Overdue Blog Post.

This past March 27^th a nutcase woman wielding two AR-15 automatic rifles and a pistol shot her way into the Covenant Presbyterian Elementary School in Memphis. After walking the halls she found three 9-year-old children and three adult teachers and blew them to smithereens. Mercifully, the police rushed in and shot her dead before she could take any more lives.

This was the 118^th school shooting incident in the first three months of 2023. That’s more than one shooting every day.

2023 School Shooting Victims Numbers 68-73

Evelyn Dieckhaus (age 9) Hallie Scruggs (age 9) William Kinney (age 9)

Katherine Koonce (age 60) Mike Hill (age 61) Cynthia Peak (age 61)

Why Should This Cranky Marketing Blog
Give a Damn About School Shootings?

Our business — yours and mine — is direct marketing.

We dream up products and services, figure out the precise arithmetic and then create selling campaigns that will bring in the most orders hopefully at the allowable CPO (cost-per-order).

After 60 years in direct marketing I have come up with the seven-word description of what we do:

“We create wants and change people’s behavior.”

If we are the foremost experts at changing behavior, how’s about we change the behavior of the rogue members of America's AR-15 sicko sub-culture addicted to performing mass murders.

The Five Enablers That Must Change Their
Behavior to Put an End to Gun Violence.

1. Congress, State and Local Politicians
2. NRA
3. Guns and Ammo Manufacturers
4. Gun Owners
5. The Media

Of the Five Groups Above, Only the Media —
The Lynchpins — Have Gone Unchallenged

I spent a week wrestling with the question: Why aren’t all Americans against mass shootings? What is the missing link?

Then it hit me. Hard. I had never seen a photograph of a crime scene — the actual schoolroom where a shooting massacre had just taken place:

• The mayhem of mutilated dead little kids with their heads blown off by a military AR-15 assault rifle.

• Their bloodied brains splattered on the walls and windows with their tiny bodies lying soaked in pools of blood — bright red blood everywhere.

• The limited number of people who have seen firsthand the real horror of mass shootings are the perps, teachers, police, EMTs, local mayors and pols, the janitors who cleaned the mess up and the traumatized little classmates lucky enough not to have been in the line of fire.

I searched all over Google, Bing , the Internet, YouTube et al., for a photo of an actual schoolroom mass murder crime scene. Couldn’t find one, not in color, not in black-and-white, not movies, not stills. Zip. Zero. Nada.

Two Appalling Crimes That Were

Graphically Pictured in My Lifetime

My family followed World War II more closely than most Americans. The reason: my father, Alden Hatch, had written the first biography of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, published in late December 1944 while the war was still raging. On April 12, 1945, General Ike flew into Ohrdruf, Germany to meet with Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley for a tour of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp system where 56,545 prisoners — men, women and children were starved, tortured and executed. The three American generals and their staffs, who had heard rumors of the cruelty, carnage and death, were seeing it firsthand for the first time.

“In a shed, a pile of roughly 30 emaciated bodies were discovered, sprinkled with lime in an attempt to cover the smell. Patton, a man privy to the violent scenes of war, refused to enter this shed as the sights and smells in the camp had previously caused him to vomit against the side of a building.” —National World War II Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana

Eisenhower sent members of his staff to interview the well-fed, German citizens that lived in the towns around the camps and were hostile to their American conquerors. How could they have stomached what was going on? the American military wanted to know. “We didn’t know anything about it,” the Germans lied.

Eisenhower ordered they tour the camp. Here's the video. I invite you to have a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SUXTq47mmc&t=5s

Fast Forward to August 1955.

Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. He was accused by a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, of offending her with a wolf whistle in the back room of her family’s grocery store. Four days later Till was lynched by Bryant’s husband and half-brother, tortured, beaten and murdered.

“Till's body was returned to Chicago, where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket, which was held at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ.^[4] It was later said that "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley^[a] exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention on not only American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy".^[5]

"Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U.S. critical of the state. Although local newspapers and law enforcement officials initially decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, temporarily giving support to the killers. In September 1955, an all-white jury found Bryant and Milam not guilty of Till's murder.” —Wikipedia

Takeaways to Consider

• For Emmett's funeral, in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the casket containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby." That photograph changed American history.

• The American media establishment — TV, radio, Internet, blogs, e-newsletters, social media, newspapers, magazines, movies, billboards and skywriting — reach directly into the lives of the entire U.S. population, currently 337 millions of us.

• Alas, no member of this vast network will ever show the actual crime scene of a modern-day mass schoolroom shooting. The reason: it would “offend.” (And be poor P.R. for the "greatest country in the history of mankind.")

• Remember Rupert Murdoch’s immortal quote: “It’s not red; it’s not blue; it's green." It's about money. (In this case it's about cancelled advertising and canceled subscription revenues.)

• The horrifying portrait of Emmett Till in death was a one-off event. A roomful of disfigured dead children with bright red blood all over the place is not in the cards.

• As a result, the greedy $2.2 trillion-dollar Media Establishment — with tentacles that reach throughout the entire country — will remain the root of all this evil. It is the ultimate enabler of America’s AR-15 culture, wielding far more power than Congress, NRA and the guns-and-ammo makers combined.

• “Viewer discretion is advised.”

• If you have a better idea, let's hear it!

Thank you.