#177 3 Exclusive Clubs

 

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2023/01/177-3-exclusive-clubs.html

#177 Blog Post - Thursday, January 12, 2023

 

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

The World's Three Most
Exclusive Private Clubs

 

Beretta .25 Automatic Pistol. Manufactured by the privately held Pietro Beretta Weapons Factory in Italy, the oldest firearms company in the world, founded in 1526.

 

Dialog from the Movie of Ian Fleming's Dr. No (1963)

 

MAJOR BOOTHROYD (Peter Burton)
(to M, referring to Bond's Beretta)

"Nice and light... in a lady's handbag."

 

M (Bernard Lee)
(to James Bond)

"Any comment, 007?"

 

                 JAMES BOND (Sean Connery)
 "I disagree, sir. I've carried the Beretta
  for ten years, and I've never missed with
  it."

                          M
"No, but it jammed on you last job, and you spent six months in hospital in consequence. When you carry a 00 number, you have a license to kill, not get killed. Furthermore, since I've been head of MI6 there's been a forty percent drop in casualties, and I want to keep it that way. From now on you carry the Walther... unless you'd rather return to standard intelligence duties."

 

JAMES BOND
"No sir, I would not."

 

M
(to Boothroyd)

"Show him, Armourer."

 

MAJOR BOOTHROYD

(Showing Bond the Walther pistol)

"Walther PPK, 7.65 millimeter, with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window. American CIA agents swear by them."

——Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, Berkely Mather, Screenwriters Dr. No. 

 

When President John F. Kennedy told a reporter that he was reading "From Russia With Love," the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming took off like a rocket. Young Sean Connery wannabes sidled up to bars all over the world and ordered a "vodka martini, very cold, shaken not stirred, served straight up."

 

Straightdope.com surmised, "James Bond has probably created more martini drinkers than all the gin joints in the world."

 

Over 60 years the Bond franchise has spawned 27 movies with a combined worldwide gross of $7.8 billion. Bond's Beretta .25 automatic pistol also took on mythic status among firearms cognoscente. It is a terrific weapon. After all, Beretta has been making guns since 1526, so it should know what it is doing.

 

What is remarkable about the Beretta company is that it is not only a family-owned business but has been in the same family since its founding 496 years ago.

 

In researching Beretta, I stumbled across a truly extraordinary exclusive club—the Henokiens. These are 51 family-owned businesses that are still going strong and in the hands of the same family for over 200 years!

 

Two Other—Much Smaller Exclusive Private Clubs… 

Club #1.   Living American ex-Presidents.

 Club #2.    The Grand Masters of the 8 Royal Palaces of  Europe.

 

The 51 Unpublicized, Fascinating Henokiens

I stumbled upon the Henokiens in 2005 when I was president, publisher editor and reporter at the now-deceased Target Marketing Magazine. Somebody mentioned the most exclusive club in the world was living ex-Presidents of the United states.

 

The roster of U.S.ex-Prexies 2005 was a group of four: Ford, Carter, Bush 41 and Clinton.

 

In 2023 the number is up to 5: Carter, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Trump.

 

What might be other exclusive clubs in this world I wanted  to know?

 

Exclusive Club #2: The Grand Masters

In the 1953 class at the Andover prep school was a low-key, wonderfully likeable, smart as hell Dutch exchange student named Floor (Florentius Willem) Kist. Over the years we kept in touch. On graduation from university Floor went into the Netherlands diplomatic service, kept his head down and his work ethic up. At some point Floor was assigned to work in The Hague at the Royal Palace. Still on the upward trajectory, Floor became "Grand Master of the Household of Her Majesty the Queen."

 

His job: running the show for Queen Beatrix at home and honchoing all her foreign travel. At some point I asked him if he would tell l me a little about royal palace grand masters.

 

 

Noordeinde Palace, one of the three official palaces 

 of the Dutch royal family, The Hague, Netherlands.

 

Floor Kist's email to me of August 5, 2005:

Yes, you told me you were starting a newsletter. I remember Peggy telling us that work behind the computer seemed to make you happy. So even if you don't get rich, you already bagged the happiness. 

 

 

Now for the question. Yes, in the meantime the Grandmasters of the Courts of Europe have decided to meet once a year, every year in a different capital. The countries are: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg (the family of the Grand-Duke is considered a Royal Family), Great Britain and Spain. 

 

Notes are compared every time. Maybe now they have even dared to embark on the question what the integration of Europe is going to do to the Royal Heads of State of the participating countries.

 

(The answer to this one is probably that the Royal Houses will be here for a long time to come. Why? Integration is slowing, the states are not likely to melt together and even if integration were more successful would probably lead to more need of expressing the various national identities, which is exactly what Royal Houses do).  

 

Let me end by presenting you and Peggy with three Scandinavian anecdotes I told a few years ago in a dinner speech. I quote:

 

To conclude I want to tell you about three experiences in my work for the Queen. When I had become Grandmaster of the House of the Queen, I had annual meetings with the eight colleagues working for the other crowned heads of Europe. In these meetings we exchanged experiences and compared notes. In 1992 we were meeting in Stockholm and the Swedish King and Queen received the group for a drink. When we were ushered in the room, wearing a simple grey suit, we saw the Royal couple standing there in full attire, the Queen in a striking evening gown and the King in the gala uniform of the Swedish Royal Navy, wearing all his decorations. After we had shaken hands there was a small silence. It was broken by my British counterpart, the private secretary of Queen Elisabeth, who said to the King and Queen: you make us feel slightly underdressed. The King hastened to explain that they were going to a very formal officers dinner that evening and were already dressed for it because there would be no time to dress after meeting with us. "Ah,"  my British colleague said, "I thought it might not be for us." 

 

 We realized the King and Queen were in for a long dinner with many toasts. That is one thing you have to know about Sweden: during dinners they do an awful lot of toasting to each other. The hostess is supposed to drink to the health of all the guests, who after a little while have to return the compliment to her. At the same time all the guests at the dinner are supposed to drink to the health of all the other guests one by one, who one by one also have to return the toast. To remember who has already toasted you and who hasn't, is a full evening's work. One thing is certain: in Sweden there is no such thing as a relaxed dinner. On the other hand in no other country can one enjoy health that is so often drunk to. 

 

Toasting is not only a Swedish custom, we find it in all Scandinavian countries. During our Queen's state visit to Norway in 1986 I sat at the gala dinner in the royal palace on the first evening of the visit. King Olav the Fifth was still alive then and was our host. It was a very formal affair. The men were in white tie with decorations, the ladies wore long evening gowns, also with decorations if they had them. Early in the main course there was a tap on my shoulder. I stiffened and looked behind me. A waiter, also in full formal dress, had a message for me. Now it was clear to me that no one would interrupt the formality of the occasion without having a very good reason. This had to be an emergency. Probably someone had died or something else terrible had happened (war had broken out somewhere). The waiter bent over and whispered to me: His Majesty wishes to toast you. I bent forward to get a view of the King, who was a certain distance away, and indeed, His Majesty was looking at me, gave me a kind nod, smiled and lifted his glass, drinking my health. I smiled back and from far away also drank his health. We were both happy. But let me tell you: up to this day that tap on my shoulder is the most frightening moment I have had in my professional life. 

 

 All the best, 

 

Floor

 

 

 (Left) Floor Kist, Peggy Hatch. (Right) Lyda Kist, Denny Hatch

 

Takeaways to Consider

• To be continued next week… The Henokiens.

The saga of 51 family-owned business—all over 250 years old—still profitable… and still run by the same family.

•The oldest… family-owned business in the world:

Hoshi Hotel in Ishikawa, Japan, which first opened its doors in 717—a whopping 1305 years ago. Yep, it’s still being run by the same family!

And yep, you can book a room. Phone: +81 761-65-1111

 

Stay Tuned…

 

Word count: 1531 

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#176 Web-NetSol Lttr

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2022/12/176-web-netsol-lttr.html

#176 Blog Post - Tuesday, December 13, 2020

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

The Textbook Example of a CEO's
eLetter That Is Awful to Read

 

 

Here Is David L. Brown's
Letter Retyped for Readability

 

 

                   Dear Loyal Customer,
I have great news for you! Network Solutions is now a Web.com company, and with that everything just got easier.
Not only will you still have access to the Network Solutions products and services you currently enjoy but you will now be able to take advantage of Web.com's acclaimed Build-it-for-Me products too! Web.com is focused on helping small businesses succeed online with our broad range of Build-it-for-Me services. So, what do we mean by that? Each website we design, Facebook page we launch or online marketing campaign we build is customize-to meet your specific needs, starting with an in-depth interview with you. We want to understand what makes your business tick in order to build the most powerful web presence for you. You say it, and we build it.
Plus, our designers and copywriters are experts in optimizing for Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook and many others. We make sure your business gets found in the places where you customers are searching, whether it's a site we've built for you or a site you already have. Over the coming weeks, you'll be introduced to the many ways in which Web.com can offer its support and expertise.
Still prefer to do it yourself? You'll continue to enjoy the same portfolios of products from Network Solutions that you do today, supported 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by our customer service teams.
Network Solutions is excited to offer this expanded portfolio, and Web.com is excited to serve you. You say it. We build it. It's as easy as Web.com!
Sincerely,
/s/ David L. Brown
David L. Brown
CEO
Web.com

This email was sent from a notification-only address. Please do not reply to this message. For Network Solutions customer service inquiries, please visit
http://www.networksolutions.com/help/index.jsp

 

The Backstory of David L. Brown's E-letter to Me

On August 3, 2011, Web.com acquired Network Solutions for $405 million plus stock. I was (and am) a Network Solutions customer having used them to acquire several domains.

 

Shortly thereafter I received the above letter from David L. Brown, head honcho of Web.com. I read it and was about to click on the trash can icon.

 

I read it again and decided it broke so many rules of copywriting it deserves a prominent place in the hierarchy (lowerarchy?) of direct marketing mediocrity. I filed it for future use.

 

About Sending a Letter

The entire purpose of contacting someone at home or in the workplace—either via e-mail, direct mail, FedEx or telemarketing—is to generate a response.

 

If you get no response, you haven't a clue whether anybody read your message. Whereupon the entire effort was a waste of time and money.

 

Here's David L. Brown's Preposterous P.S.

This email was sent from a notification-only address. Please do not reply to this message. For Network Solutions customer service inquiries, please visit
https://www.networksolutions.com/help/index.jsp

 

The Salutation

David L. Brown, CEO of web.com, sent the above letter to my email address. His computers know my name. Yet his salutation is the lazy and insulting, "Dear Loyal Customer."

 

IMO the correct salutation to a stranger is: "Dear Denny Hatch."

 

Not "Dear Denny." (We've never met. Friends and family call me "Denny.")

 

Not "Dear Mr. Hatch." (It's dumb to assume gender these days. I know of a woman named Sidney and well remember the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue.")

 

Were I known to be an M.D. or Ph.D., "Dear Dr. Hatch," would be correct.

 

The Lede

• "The first 10 words are more important than the next ten thousand."
—Elmer "Sizzle" Wheeler.

 

Here are David L. Brown's first 16 words:

Dear Loyal Customer,
I have great news for you! Network Solutions is now a Web.com company...

 

The lede of a letter should be an instant stopper that drives you to keep on reading. As founder of the newsletter, WHO'S MAILING WHAT! for over 30 years I read roughly 1800 mailings a month in 249 categories. Below is my favorite lede for the four-page masterpiece written by a Franciscan Priest in 1972.

 

                                                      Friday, 10:40 PM

 

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 hands smeared, her clothes torn and soiled. The lady was 11.
—Fr. Bruce Ritter, Covenant House

 

Ritter's 4-page, typewriter font letter launched the New York City runaway children's shelter that mushroomed into 34 free, safe refuges in cities across six countries that provide food, beds and counseling for 1.5 million young people a year, victims in the streets of homelessness and trafficking. The "dirty lady" letter was the control for many years.

 

"Normally the best lede paragraph for your letter is buried somewhere in the middle of your first draft copy."
—Pat Friesen

 

David L. Brown's eMail: Visually Cold and Uninviting

Imagine the above letter appearing on your computer screen, iPad or iPhone. It's a forbidding 295-word gray wall of type.

 

"Avoid gray walls of type."
—David Ogilvy

 

"Short words! Short sentences! Short paragraphs!"    
 —Andrew J. Byrne

 

"Type smaller than 9-point is difficult for most people to read."
—David Ogilvy

 

Where's David L. Brown's Headline?

"The wickedest of all sins is to run an advertisement without a headline."
—David Ogilvy

 

"The headline selects the reader."
—Axel Andersson

 

"The headline is the ticket on the meat. Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising."
—David Ogilvy

 

"The headline is the hot pants on the hooker."
—Bill Jayme

 

On a direct mail letter, the headline can be a powerful teaser on the outside carrier envelope. Or it can be a short boldface attention-getter or a Johnson Box at the top of the letter.

 

In email, the headline can be the subject line or an old-fashioned boldface headline atop the message.

 

David Brown's headline/subject line is ho-hum:
A message from CEO David L. Brown from Network Solutions to you

 

Harry Walsh: About the Direct Marketing Letter

"The tone of a good letter is as direct and personal as the writer’s skill can make it. Even though it may go to millions of people, it never orates to a crowd, but rather murmurs into a single ear. It’s a message from one letter writer to one letter reader.

 

"Tell a story if possible. Everybody loves a good story, be it about Peter Rabbit or King Lear. And the direct response letter, with its unique person-to-person format—is the perfect vehicle for a story. Stories get read. The letter I wrote to launch the Cousteau Society twenty-some years ago has survived hundreds of tests against it. When I last heard, it was still being mailed in some form or other. The original of this direct mail Methuselah started out with this lede: 'A friend once told me a curious story I would like to share with you...' "
—Harry Walsh

 

Malcolm Decker: About the Letter

"The letter is itself is the pen-and-ink embodiment of a salesperson who is speaking personally and directly to the prospect on a one-to-one basis. The letter is the most powerful and persuasive selling force in direct marketing, once the product, price and offer are set. The writer creates the salesman, usually from whole cloth, and you must be certain that this sales representative is truly representative of your product or service as well as of your company. 

 

"The letter is likely to be the only 'person' your market will ever meet—at least on the front end of the sale—so don’t make him highbrow if your market is lowbrow and vice versa.

 

"Make sure he speaks your prospect's language. If he’s a Tiffany salesman, he writes in one style; if he’s a grapefruit or pecan farmer or a beef grower, he writes differently  (‘Cause he talks diffrunt.) I develop as clear a profile of my prospect as the available research offers and then try to match it up with someone I know and 'put him in a chair' across from me. Then I write to him more or less conversationally.

 

"The salesperson in the letter is doing the job he obviously loves and is good at. He knows the product inside and out and is totally confident in and at ease with its values and benefits—even its inconsequential shortcomings—and wants to get the prospect in on a good thing. Here is someone with a sense of rhythm, timing, dramatic effect and possibly even humor—getting attention... piquing curiosity... holding interest... engaging rationally... anticipating and assuaging doubts... and ultimate winning the confidence (and the signature on the order) of the prospect. The personal technique is seen most clearly in long letters.

 

"How long should a letter be? The best-known answer to that age-old question is: 'As long as it has to be.' That doesn’t tell you much, but perhaps it suggests two important criteria: economy and—above all—efficiency. As a sometime angler, I get a better sense of length by remembering a fishing trip to Maine when we used dry flies with barbless hooks. Unless you kept up the tension all the way to the net, you lost the trout. Try it.  You should feel the same sort of tension when you write and when you read a letter.  If not... reel in the slack.

 

"Whatever your marketing stance, a good designer can help you express it, and that helps your reader identify you. The objective is individuation—to stand out in the increasingly competitive marketplace of the mailbox—so that when it comes time to toss the me-too mail, yours won’t be part of it.

 

"The letter MUST be quickly scannable: that is, a reader should get the gist of the proposition simply by reading the (1) eyebrow, (2) lede paragraph, (3) crossheads, (4) wrap-up, (5) P.S. If not, send it back for surgery, because without a strongly integrated skeleton, the body of the argument will slump.

 

"The letter MUST be easy on the eyes, open, inviting and varying in its texture—with normal margins... individual paragraphs with line space between... at least one crosshead or subhead per page (two per page for long letters)... occasional variation in paragraph width... a quotation, underlined sentence or phrase... numbers or bullets to list benefits... and/or other bits of “color” to maintain reader interest by promising visual variety. The longer the letter, the more important these techniques.

 

"Don't overlook the color, size and vitality of your signature. Your signature is your handshake. Ugly is good. A neat, tidy computer-generated signature font kills believability."

 

"Make sure the right person signs the letter. (e.g., NOT Joan Pendergraft, Executive Assistant to Sid Pulitzer. Obviously Joan did not write the letter, so believability goes out the window.)"

 

"The letter can have handwritten notations in the margins, a scrawled P.S or underlining for emphasis. Make sure the handwritten notations match the handwriting of the signature."
—Malcolm Decker

 

“Of all the formats used in direct mail, none has more power to generate action than the letter.”
—Dick Hodgson

 

Christian Holtz: Characters per Line

"Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to thereadability of your text. It shouldn’t merely be your design that dictates the width of your text, it should also be a matter of legibility. . .

 

"In order to avoid the drawbacks of too long and too short lines,but still energize your readers and keep them engaged, we suggest keeping it within the range of 50-75 characters per line."
—Christian Holtz, Baymard Institute

 

Walter Weintz: Variations of Direct Marketing Copy
"There are three kinds of copy: you copy; me copy; and it copy.

 

 "You copy is the most important. It is found in the letter where the writer is talking intimately to you, the reader about you. Your wants, your loves, your wishes, your salvation.

 

“It is found in the circular or brochure where it—the product or service being sold is described and pictured.

 

"Me copy turns up in two places.  First of all, you’ll find me on the order form, which is a reprise of the offer in the reader’s own voice.  ('Yes, please send me, the product and charge my Visa. I understand that if at any time I should become dissatisfied...'

 

The other occurrence is in testimonials or lift letters.  ('Frankly, I’m puzzled...' or 'I tried this product and I am a true believer.  Here’s my story'...)

 

"The beauty of direct mail and email is that it enables the salesperson to use all parts of the English language, plus illustrations, graphs, charts and any other bells and whistles to capture attention and engage a reader."
—Walter Weintz

 

Note: There ain't no we copy in direct marketing. Yet David L. Brown uses we seven times in his letter. We is not I. We is not a real person writing the letter. We is the impersonal voice of everyone in the corporation—all those wimps hiding out because they fear being mentioned by name.

 

The I's Have It.

“The most important word in direct copy is not ‘you’ — as many of the textbooks would have it—but 'I'. What makes a letter seem ‘personal’ is not seeing your own name printed dozens of times across the page, or even being battered to death with a never ending attack of ‘you’s.’ It is, rather, the sense that one gets of being in the presence of the writer… that a real person sat down and wrote you a real letter
—Richard Armstrong

 

"A letter is NOT a monolithic corporation addressing a computer-generated market profile; it is not impersonal in tone, form or content.

"A letter is NOT a letterhead on top and a signature on the bottom with the most cherished sales pitch of the VP marketing sandwiched in between.

"Direct marketing is not advertising in an envelope."
—Bob Hacker

 

The 2 Hotspots in Your Email Inbox:

• The From line: If the sender's name or organization is not recognizeable, chances are an immediate delete.

• The Subject line: If the msessage doesn't immediately grab attention, chances are an immediate delete.

 

• Try to limit your subject line to no more than 9 words and 60 characters. 

• Many copywriters spend as much time on the subject line/headline as they do on the messages.

• When I send an important email, I always test it by sending it to myself. I wait until a number of emails have come in and then see how my subject line compares to the others. If it doesn't pop, it's back to the drawing board.

 

The 12 Most Powerful and Evocative words in the English Language:

You — Save — Money — Easy — Guarantee — Health — Results — New — Love — Discovery — Proven —Safety
—Goodman Ace

 

"FREE is a magic word."
—Dick Benson

 

The 7 Key Copy Drivers—the Emotional Hot Buttons That Make People Act:

Fear - Greed - Guilt - Anger - Exclusivity -
Salvation - Flattery
—Axel Andersson, Bob Hacker, Denny Hatch

 

Takeaways to Consider

• The entire purpose of direct mail or email, as well as advertisements and telemarketing calls—is to change behavior: get a reply, an order, a payment or a donation.

 

 • It's been a long-held tenet of mine that corporate CEOs should run their correspondence and speeches past the eyes of an experienced copywriter before clicking SEND.

 

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Word Count: 2472