http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2023/08/194-fryd-dm-lesson.html
#194 Blog Post - Wednesday 22 August 2023
Posted by Denny Hatch
The Greatest Direct Marketing Lesson
I Have Learned in the Last Sixty Years
Quickie Preface: Mike and Susan Fryd are close friends and neighbors. A modest, shy, low-key guy, Mike quietly and offhandedly mentioned his book was being published. I immediately bought it and read it. Whereupon I was gobsmacked. I guarantee you will be also. —DH
Below: My Review of
Mike Fryd's Stunning
Reminiscence Just Published on Amazon
A Riveting and Often Hilarious Memoir of Nazism and Motherhood.
My Mother’s War is the gripping account of growing up as the child of penniless Polish Jews who spent six years dodging capture and certain death by the Nazis. You will savor Michael Fryd’s paean to his indomitable entrepreneur mother who saved her family. Mike Fryd writes:
“The entire business establishment was in a state of chaos; there was no organized system for the transportation and distribution of goods. There were shortages of certain commodities in one part of the country, while mountains of the same rotted next to idle railroad tracks only fifty miles away.
“This was a perfect climate for making money on the black market. Somehow, my mother found people and trucks who helped her move merchandise from areas of surplus where she could buy them at very low prices to areas of scarcity where she could sell them at a premium. Often, our one-room apartment served as a temporary warehouse for whatever was the transaction du jour: medicines, hams, tires, furs, condoms, yes condoms. Mom brought a truckload of them from Germany and sold them at a very handsome profit to drugstores in Warsaw. Condoms were in short supply in Poland and were much needed to control venereal diseases spread by both the German and Russian armies.
“When my mom wasn’t smuggling watches, one could always find her on the Rue des Rosiers where she indulged in her favorite profession, black marketing in foreign currency. When I wasn’t in school, I would often accompany her, reprising my old role of “Mule,” an unobvious carrier of sizable sums of illegal currency… It was an exotic and exciting bazaar where millions of dollars changed hands every minute, and a man’s word was his bond. My mom was the only woman trader, as far as I know, and I was the only child around.
“Many of the dealers went out of their way to teach me the tricks of the trade or just to amuse me. I learned how to count money fast, just like a banker, and how to spot a fake diamond; a drop of water beads up on a diamond, but spreads on glass or cubic zirconia.”
I Couldn’t Put the Book Down
I read it straight through the weekend. It is one of a kind —a masterpiece! As I reluctantly came to the glorious ending of this extraordinary adventure four words kept repeating themselves inside my head: Movie. Spielberg. Academy Awards. —Denny Hatch
Michael Fryd
From Mike Fryd’s
Preface
“While writing I realized the heart of the story was my larger-than-life mother, Evelyn Fryd. We survived against all odds because the Nazis and Polish anti-Semites were no match for her. During those years she was a mythic figure with boundless energy and cunning, determined to do whatever it took to save her family from Hitler’s clutches.”
In the Mayhem and Horror of World War II, in Poland,
Evelyn Fryd Morphed into World Class Direct Marketer
For starters, she was constantly aware of — and practiced — the five-letter credo that describes exactly what we direct marketers do:
“Create wants and change behavior.”
To achieve these
goals, direct marketers are perpetually challenged and are forced to learn lots
of new stuff every day. It's a fascinating career!
• Exactly who are our buyers or clients?
• How and where do we find more of them?
• The challenge is to get inside their heads and walk in their shoes so we can think how they think, feel what they feel, and know and become them. Talk to them. Make their lives better. Like us lots. And want to hear from us often.
What Does the Mike Fryd’s Mother in World War II
Have to Do with Direct Marketing Today? Everything!
A serial entrepreneur, she was on a perpetual learning curve — continually studying about businesses, products and services and how to buy them, market them and make customers happy. She was also a world class student of people — always able to see into their inner selves, their wants, their needs, their fears, greed, guilt, anger and desire for exclusivity. In all her transactions she provided salvation and exuded flattery. Everybody loved her!
In short, Evelyn was a textbook direct marketer — getting inside the heads of the people she dealt with, seeing what they saw, feeling what they felt and, in effect, becoming the person and talking directly to them.
Comparing Evelyn Fryd to Three of the Greatest
Direct Marketing Entrepreneurs of My Lifetime
David Ogilvy
"He walked into a
London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was
about to open it as a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had
$500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the
office boy, who happened to be the author of this book. I invested his money in
penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the
neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted
blood.”
—Confessions of an Advertising Man
Maxwell Sackheim
In 1926 Max was an agency copywriter who got inside the heads of book readers and came up with a unique scheme that sold tens of millions of books. Ninety-six years later it is still going strong. The main elements of the business model that persuaded members to join the club:
• Irresistible Introductory Offer (Sign up and take your choice of one, two, or three books free), no risk to have a look.
• You can acquire best-selling titles before they’re available in stores.
• Dazzle your friends, neighbors and business associates with how much you know about what's going on in the worlds news, literature and culture.
• Special book club editions are cheaper to manufacture.
• Ergo: discount prices, big savings.
• The “Negative Option” makes it easy-peasy to build a world class library. (“Unless you tell us not to send the Main Selection (or want one or more Alternate Selections), the book will be shipped automatically.”
• If not 100% satisfied, full return privileges, no hassle, no questions asked (even if you’ve already read it).
• Bonus books. (Buy 4 club selections at terrific discount prices and get one free reward book of your choice.).
• Sackheim’s name for the club: Book-of-the-Month.
Bill Bonner
In 1979 stony broke and up to his ears in debt Bill mailed a dry test — an 8-page letter offering a trial subscription to INTERNATIONAL LIVING (an imaginary magazine that existed only inside his head). If he got enough orders, he would publish it.
The launch mailing package for INTERNATION LIVING did 300% of breakeven and was hugely profitable from Day 1. Today Agora Publishing is a mini conglomerate of 30 companies that bring in over $1 billion a year.
Bill Bonner in front of the first of his two 18th century chateaux in France (just up the road from David Ogilvy's.)
A Totally Opposite Career from Direct Marketing Where a
Guy Did the Same Thing Over and Over and Over Again
Last week I turned 88. What triggered this Blog Post was this New
York Times Obituary that ran on my birthday.
Philip L. Sherman, Who Circumcised Thousands of Babies, Dies at 67
His record, he said, was 11 in a single day, including two pairs of twins — a considerable scheduling feat, considering that the ritual is to be performed on the eighth day of the baby’s life and during daylight.
He died on Aug. 9 at his home in Englewood, N.J. He was 67. His daughter, Nina Sherman Green, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Sherman, whose website (as well as his vanity license plate) was emoil.com, claimed to have performed some 26,000 ritual circumcisions, mostly in the New York metropolitan area, during his 45-year career. He was trained in the Jewish religious practice of brit milah — a profession generally spelled “mohel” in English and pronounced “moil.”
His services did not come cheap. “You pay $800 for a steady hand and a good reputation,” Scott Stringer, the former New York City comptroller, told The Times after his son, who was born in December 2011, was circumcised by Mr. Sherman. “It’s not the kind of thing where you’re looking to save money.”
But Mr. Sherman said he did not turn away families who could not afford his fee.
He also served as a cantor at several synagogues in New York, including the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Manhattan from 1985 to 2019. He also occasionally worked as an actor.
Yes, he acknowledged, of course the baby feels pain during it. But, he added, “when it’s done properly, only for a moment.”
And, yes, he said, it was also true that sometimes even just by imagining the removal of the baby’s foreskin, one of the parents or a guest might pass out. But, he suggested cheerfully, “usually at a bris, there’s no shortage of doctors or lawyers.”
Excerpted from Sam Roberts' splendid tongue-in-cheek obit, August 15, 2023
Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times
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