Tuesday, February 26, 2019

#44 A Sales Pitch That Started with a Delicious Short Story



Issue #44 – Wednesday [DATE] 2019
Posted by Denny Hatch


A Sales Pitch That Started with a Delicious Short Story

 NOTE: Don't try to read the tiny type on this envelope. I have retyped it for easier reading below. This is the start of the short story.

Above is the 6” x 9” outside envelope that I received many years ago.
     The offer was for Predictions, a financial newsletter published out of Boca Raton, Florida. I’m a bit hazy on who the publisher was—either Lee Euler or Joel Nadel.
     I received this mailing only once—or maybe twice—so it could not have been a huge success. But, in the words of Arizona direct marketer and Harley-Davidson aficionado “Rocket Ray” Jutkins
     There are no failures; only lessons.
     Besides, for sheer fun, this effort ranks as a dandy short story… as well as a misbegotten sales letter.

Here is the teaser copy on the envelope above:

THE 100% GUARANTEE

a short story by
John B. Palmer


Chapter One

   The letter that started it all arrived in Joel Adler’s mailbox on a cold Saturday morning a few weeks before Christmas. It was an ordinary-looking blue envelope, no return address, sandwiched between a copy of Time and a handwritten letter from Joel’s son Tim, a college senior, undoubtedly asking for money.

   Joel sorted quickly through the mail, found nothing that riveted his attention, and turned back to the morning paper. “QB Hurt: 49ers Super Bowl Hopes Plunge,” screamed the banner headline on the sports page. “I’ll have to remember that for the football pool,” Joel thought.

   Perhaps it was the Super Bowl reminder that caused Joel’s glance to shift to the little blue envelope... for it was then that he noticed the line printed discretely on the envelope just to the left of his name:
“SUPER BOWL WINNER: 100% GUARANTEED. $1.”

   Now intrigued, Joel ripped open the envelope. Inside he found only a very short letter, which, in its entirety, read as follows:

Dear Sir:
   The winner of next month’s Super Bowl game is known to me. For the sum of one American dollar in cash, I will reveal the name to you. If the team I name does not win, your dollar will be returned within 72 hours and you will never hear from me again. —Balthazar Balash

   Well, as you can imagine, Joel was hooked. “What’s this guy’s gimmick,” he wondered. “He can’t be making any money at a dollar a clip.” Joel extracted his wallet, removed a wrinkled one-dollar bill, inserted in the reply envelope and tossed it in the outgoing mail basket.

   Shortly after New Year’s, another little blue envelope arrived at the Adler household. The letter inside read as follows:

                                    (continued inside)

Letter continued from the envelope front in typewriter (Courier) font:

Dear Sir:

The winner of the Super Bowl game will be the San Francisco 49ers. —Balthazar Balash
Of course Joel didn’t believe a word of it. But the office betting pool was a small one. And even when he pocketed his winnings, following San Francisco's dramatic upset victory, he hardly thought about the little blue envelope.

A few weeks later, the next blue envelope arrived.
Dear Sir:
The winner of next month’s election for Prime Minister of France is known to me. For the sum of five American dollars in cash, I will reveal the name to you. If the candidate I name does not win, your five dollars will be returned within 72 hours and you will never hear from me again. —Balthazar Balash

     Joel had little interest in French politics, but he was sufficiently intrigued to risk five dollars to see what would happen.
     What happened was what the newspapers called “Stunning Upset in French Vote.”
     “Boy,” thought Joel to himself, “I could have made a bundle betting on that one. Wonder what’s next.”

     Next came a blue envelope guaranteeing the winner of a basketball playoff game — for $10. Joel made a few side bets at the office, and then made a pleasant profit when the prediction came true.

     After the fourth prediction — for $25 — the surprise winner of a big mayor’s election — Joel was baffled, confused, and even more intrigued. He felt the need to talk things over with his old friend Jay Sampson.

     “Jay, as a commodity broker, you’re in the prediction business yourself. What do you make of all this?”   
     The broker puffed on his pipe thoughtfully. “Look, Joel, you know as well as I that no one can see into the future. It’s just a gimmick of some kind.”
     “Maybe so,” Joel replied, “But you’ve got to admit that four upsets in a row is pretty darn good.”
     “Or pretty lucky. I’d like to see this Balash character try to predict something in my racket.”

     “Then take a look at this,” said Joel, tossing a blue envelope onto the broker’s desk.
     “Fascinating,” said Jay. “For a mere fifty bucks, he will tell you whether the price of gold will be higher or lower on June first than on May first. Are you inclined to take the risk?”
     “Well, uh, I already have. Here’s his answer.” The familiar blue sheet had only one word on it: “Higher.” Joel smiled sheepishly. “I, uh, thought I might sell that mutual fund on May first and, well, buy some gold.”
     The June 1 closing fix on gold in London was $22.50 higher than the May 1 close.

     And the next four predictions, which cost the new partnership of Adler and Sampson $100, $250, $500, and $1,000 respectively, were equally surprising and equally correct. The two men, who had made quite a bit of money in investments and side bets, were utterly mystified.

     “Look,” said Jay at one of their weekly lunches that fall, “I know I said I didn’t believe in magic. “But, well look — this Balash has made nine correct predictions in a row, and at least seven of them were big surprises. The odds against that are astronomical.”

     Joel readily agreed. “Unexplainable things do happen all the time. I don’t know if it’s what they call a miracle or what. I just know that I’m darn well convinced.”
     “I’ve got to admit that I am too,” said the broker. “In fact, I can hardly wait for prediction number ten.”
     “Then have a look at this,” said Joel. “It came in the morning mail.”  The blue sheet read as follows:

Dear Sir:

On September 27, there is a fight for the WBC heavyweight championship of the world. The winner is known to me. I will sell you that name for the sum of one million American dollars in cash. If the fighter I name does not win, I will refund your one million dollars within 72 hours.
                          —Balthazar Balash

     The two men looked at each other long and hard. Then, as one, they whipped out their pens and started calculating. “If I re-mortgage the house...” “I’ve had an offer on that land in Hawaii.”  “I can put together a syndicate —- I know Gustafson and Whitman would go for it...”

     And so it went. Within a week, the syndicate had been formed. One million dollars to buy the name of the winner, and four million more to place the bets discreetly at Las Vegas and London bookmaking parlors.
     The huge sum of cash was transmitted, and two weeks before the fight, the blue envelope came.
     The syndicate gathered in Jay’s office to open it. Joel was the first to speak. 
     “It’s Walker,” he shouted. “Walker —- the four-to-one underdog. That means sixteen million dollars, gentlemen. Sixteen million dollars!”

Chapter Two
Walker lost.

Chapter Three
The money was never returned.

Chapter Four
Final Report: The Balthazar Balash Case
Investigative Unit, Los Angeles Police Department

     Based on records found in the apartment abandoned by Balash the day after two parcels containing $1 million cash each were sent to his Post Office box, the method used was as follows:

     Initially, Balash sent out enough sales letters to produce at least 1,024 responses. Half of these customers (512) got a letter predicting that San Francisco would win the Super bowl. The other 512 got a letter predicting that Cincinnati would win. When San Francisco won, he used the money sent in by the 512 winners to make refunds to the 512 losers.

     Next, for the French election, he sent one candidate’s name to 256 of his remaining customers and the other name to the other 256. Again, he paid off the losers with the money sent by the winners.

     Now he had only 256 customers left. 128 got the name of one basketball team, 128, the other. For the mayor’s election, 64 people were sent each name. For the gold prediction, 32 people were told “higher” and 32 were told “lower.”

     And so it went, right down the very last prediction, when he had only two customers left. Each of these customers had been given, by the luck of the draw, nine correct predictions. They were well and truly hooked. Of course they didn’t know that there had originally been 1,022 other clients.

     One customer (an Arab oil sheikh) was given one fighter’s name for a million dollars, and the Adler syndicate was given the other fighter’s name for another million. The Arab presumably is quite happy now, and so, we may assume, is Balthazar Balash, who disappeared with two million dollars in cash, and can almost certainly never be traced.

Conclusion:
In the business of predicting the future, some people may be quite good indeed —- but there’s no such thing as a 100% guarantee.

     Anyone investing in the advice of predictors is hereby advised to act cautiously.

-----------------------------------

Dear Fellow Investor,

Now that I have your attention, I would like to recommend that you very cautiously make a modest investment in the services of some of the best investment predictors in the world today.

There is a new, inexpensive but extremely powerful investment advisory service called, simply, PREDICTIONS: SPECIFIC INVESTMENT FORECASTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE WORLD’S TOP FINANCIAL EXPERTS.

Blah.... blah.... blah...

Takeaways to Consider
• When I received first received this letter, started reading the envelope and wondered where this thing was going.

• I got intrigued by the story all the way up to the end and the salutation, "Dear Fellow Investor," and the two paragraphs that followed.

• I remember being simply delighted at finding such a nifty piece of prose in my mailbox. I put the letter down to think, for a moment, about the two guys who had bet the ranch and wondered whether I would have fallen for the same ruse. (I wouldn’t have.)
        
• The point is, I put the letter down!
        
“As a sometime angler, I remembered 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.” —Freelancer Malcolm Decker

• I urge you to always remember Mal Decker's barbless hook when you are creating an email or a direct mail letter.

• If your prose suddenly goes slack and it is laid aside, chances are good it's dead.

• A letter or email is an interruption to the normal daily routine—just like a baby crying, a dog barking, a phone call or the doorbell ringing. An interruption of that interruption is usually fatal to the sale. Chances are the mailing will be left on the table unread and then gathered up with the sports pages and tossed in the recycling bin.

• Or—if an email—Delete will be clicked.

My opinion: The Balthazar Balash letter is wonderfully written. A hoot. But, clearly, the overpowering message left with the reader is that you are going to get screwed over by anyone who claims to be able to predict the future.

• So, while The 100% Guarantee is a spectacular piece of prose, it negates the entire concept of the product being sold. It is cute; it is clever. But it ultimately craps on concept of spending money with someone who says he can predict the future.

• Compare this letter to Bruce Ritter’s fundraiser for Covenant House that tells the story of the three kids showing up at his front door. It was a dandy short story—far shorter than the Balthazar tale—and Ritter was able to make an easy, logical segue into guilt and why you should give money to Covenant House.

• Not a single benefit to the reader is expressed anywhere in this 1,447-word short story about the Balthazar Balash scam.

• It’s creepy.
        
• “Your job is to sell, not to entertain.” —Jack Maxson, freelancer whose elegant prose put Brookstone’s Hard-to-Find Tools catalog on the map.

###

Word count: 2,125

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 e-mail to dennyhatch@yahoo.com. I guarantee your personal information will not be shared with anyone at any time for any reason. I look forward to being in touch!

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

You Are Invited to Join the Discussion!

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

#43 How a Successful Direct Marketing Business Was Destroyed

Issue #43 - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 

Posted by Denny Hatch

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2019/02/43-how-successful-direct-marketing.html


How a Successful Direct Marketing Business Was Destroyed
My first wild success in business, how it was
trashed and why I was fired six months later.
In the mid-1960s I was hired as a (very) junior copywriter by Grolier Enterprises in New York—a division of the publisher of Encyclopedia Americana.
     Grolier Enterprises' main business was a hugely profitable children's club selling hardcover Dr. Seuss books by mail. It's unique business model: reaching out to parents and children through teachers in elementary school classrooms. 
     The company was run by four dynamos. Founder and CEO was Elsworth Howell, whose real love was publishing dog books and  judging Westminster dog shows in Madison Square Garden.

Elsworth Howell (left) awards the blue ribbon to Ch. Carmichael's Fanfare, 1965
 
The other three members of this high-powered quartet were: Vice President Bob Clarke, who had worked his way up from the Grolier mail room (a fact Howell never let him forget); VP Marketing Ed Bakal, a rough-hewn ex-WWII paratrooper; and Creative VP Lew Smith, the low-key marketing and copy genius who hired me and was my first great mentor.
The Competition
Grolier's main competitor was Scholastic Magazines also selling children's books via teachers in classrooms. Scholastic's offer: inexpensive children's paperback books for 25¢—roughly 1/10th Grolier's price for a hardcover Dr. Seuss book.
Enter an Underfunded Entrepreneur

Using the Scholastic paperback model, a guy named Joe Archy tested the Willie Whale Book Club offering paperbacks to kids via classroom teachers. Grolier's Howell watched Willie Whale grow and liked what he saw. He contacted Archy and said he was interested in buying him out. They signed confidentiality agreements. Stupidly, Archy laid out his entire business plan and results for Howell to study. Howell then told Archy that he had decided not to buy Willie Whale.
     Whereupon Howell launched the Peter Possum Book Club offering children's paperback books.
     Archy sued Howell and Grolier.
     Archy lost.
I was Peter Possum.
Brand new to direct marketing, I was handed the book club to launch from scratch and to run: 
• All titles were to be 64 pages, 5-1/4" x 7-3/4".
• All titles must be in the public domain. These were the books of dead authors and illustrators whose copyright had run out. Howell was not about to pay royalties.
• Cost per book: 35¢.
• This was a higher price than the competition. However...
• All books could be in full color throughout—absolutely stunning, elegant classics compared to the dreary black-and-white Scholastic and Willie Whale editions.
Center Spread, Beauty and the Beast by Walter Crane (1875)

• For every five books ordered, we included a free book for the teacher's classroom library—or to be used as free giveaways to the children of families too poor to afford buying books of their own. Nobody was left out. 
Unique Cover Design
Money was saved by not varnishing the covers. The collateral damage was that ink from the unvarnished cover illustrations would get on readers' fingers, resulting in smudges, not only on the covers but also on the inside pages. The inventive solution: elegant white covers with small a full-color image centered and out of reach of kids' inky little fingers.

I was expected to do everything—find royalty-free books, get them redesigned and into production, write and design the mailing pieces, decide on lists of teachers and work with Grolier's mail production wizard mike Chomko, count orders (if any), tally up money and set up fulfillment procedures.
      A direct mail virgin, I quickly became expert in copyright law and 19th century children's artists. I charged forth, running all over New York buying up vintage out-of-copyright children's books from second-hand bookstores. I was on the lookout especially for the great illustrators of the past: Beatrix Potter, Walter Crane, Edward Lear, L. Leslie Brooke, Gustav Doré, Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, and John Tenniel.
     God, how I loved learning to be an entrepreneur!
     Every time I found myself in over my head—which was often—I would cry out for help. One of the four partners would immediately clear his desk, sit me down, talk me off the edge, through the problem and then send me on my way.
     I can say those three months were the greatest, most fun time I ever had in business. I earned what had to be the equivalent of an MBA in direct mail marketing, book club management, copywriting, book production, product fulfillment and working with a team to oversee a complex business model.
Wow-eee!
Test mailings went out and I discovered the orgiastic thrill of direct mail success. Every day giant canvas bags of business reply mail from the Post Office—filled with thousands of book orders and mountains of cash—piled into the mailroom.
     Some of the orders contained hand-written raves from deliriously happy teachers.
     Peter Possum was an unequivocal, raging Win! Win! Win!
     The four partners, my editor Roberta Sewell, designer Gil Evans, the production team—indeed everyone in the company—were positively giddy.
     When Peter Possum was offering nine titles, each cover was large and easy for parent and child to evaluate; the descriptive copy was in a readable font.


Management Squashes Denny
Instead of allowing me to start making real money for the company by rolling out nationally with this hugely successful test that offered nine beautiful books, the four partners ganged up on me and radically changed the deal. They told me:
• More is better.
• Find 15 more titles for a total of 24.
• The covers were now to be solid colors and varnished.
     I said, "Yeah, but don't we want to mail the original mailing against the new one?"
     I was shot down. "We've been successfully selling into this market for ten years. We know this business. We know the people. We know what works. The more titles the better. Color covers work better. Do as we say."
     And oh, by the way, I was ordered to start a second book club with another 24 titles for the next higher grade levels.
     I was young and inexperienced. This was my second job after two years in the Army. Next to their decades of experience, I did not know squat.
Yet everything I was ordered to do felt all wrong, looked wrong and didn't make sense!
     I grimly soldiered on, crazed and working 14 hours a day, seven days a week. My then wife left me. What had been beautiful, easy-to-read mailing brochures to teachers, parents and kids were turned into multi-colored hodgepodges of unreadable tiny mousetype, teeny book illustrations with all the charm and warmth of a sheet of World War II ration coupons or S&H Green Stamps.

Peter Possum bombed. Big time.
So did Gold Mine Book Club for older kids, with its  24 "brand-new" public domain titles.
     The mentor and advocate who hired me, Lew Smith, left to become Lester Wunderman's creative director and executive vice president.
    The fat little toady who replaced Lew immediately brought in his favorite out-of-work hack copywriter.
     I was fired with two weeks pay.
     Sixty years later I am grateful to these wizards for what they taught me and allowed me to do. At the same time I am still mightily pissed off at how they destroyed Peter Possum and denied generations of children from turning into avid readers by experiencing these glorious books!
Hard-wired into my DNA: These Direct Marketing Rules!
• If you have an idea for a product or service, DO NOT sign a confidentiality agreement with a shyster and then lay bare all your proprietary data hoping the son-of-a-bitch will buy you out. Chances are he won't.
• Let your people own their jobs.
• Never abandon a successful control for something different because you're bored and think you know best.
• The Nutsy Fagan "more-is-better" dictum thrown in my face is akin to the marketing concept: "Hey, if Book-of-the-Month Club is wildly successful, let's scrap it and start a Book-of-the-Week Club!"
• The marketplace will tell you what it wants; you don't tell the marketplace.
• Test away from a successful control s-l-o-w-l-y.
• Always back-test.
• Always set aside at least 15% of your marketing budget for testing.
• Even if you're the new kid on the block, have the cajones to fight like hell for what you know in your gut is right.

###
Word count: 1,362


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 e-mail to dennyhatch@yahoo.com. I guarantee your personal information will not be shared with anyone at any time for any reason. I look forward to being in touch!

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

You Are Invited to Join the Discussion!

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

#42 The Magic of Personalization


Issue #42 - Tuesday, February 12, 2019
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2019/02/42-magic-of-personalization_12.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

The Magic of Personalization


I have always been fascinated by presidential scandals.
     In the early 1970s I was gripped by Watergate—couldn't wait for the latest CBS-TV news from Walter Cronkite and read everything I could get my hands on.
     When it was revealed that President Nixon had bugged himself and the transcript of all his Watergate tapes were offered for sale by the Government Printing Office in a massive 1,200 page book, I immediately ordered it, read it and made notes throughout.

 In a moment of mischievousness—just to see what the hell would happen—I wrote the President a formal letter asking if I sent him my annotated copy (paying postage both ways) would he and James D. St. Clair [Nixon's personal lawyer] sign it and return it to me?
     Several weeks later I received this deadpan response from the White House:

This was the real deal. My request probably circulated around the Executive Mansion and Roland Elliott was tapped to write this reply. I dined out on it for several weeks.
     Whereupon the letter from the President himself at the top of this post arrived in a real White House envelope and White House stationery and signed by the President.
     Peggy opened the letter while I was still at the office and she called me. She was hysterical—incapable of coherence. She was laughing so hard that she could only burble, "You've gotta come home and see this!" and hung up.
Was Nixon's letter real? It sure looked real! 
The personalization was stunning. Nixon was known to use tough language. And there was precedent for such a presidential letter. 
     I vividly remember the front-page brouhaha on December 6, 1950 when President Harry Truman threatened to beat the crap out of Washington Post music critic Paul Hume for roundly panning a concert by First (and only) Daughter Margaret Truman.

From the President's hastily scrawled, hand-written letter on White House stationery:

Translation:
     "Some day I hope to meet you. When that   
     happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of     
     beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a 
     supporter below!"

   We dined out on our Nixon letter for several days, until the publicity director of the CBS-owned publisher of the paperback edition of my second novel, The Fingered City—Tom Baskind, as naughty as I am—surfaced and gleefully confessed to the ruse.
     It was an elaborate gag. It required an operative in D.C. to filch some White House stationery. The letter had to be written, the envelope typed and mailed from the D.C. Post Office with ZIP code nearest the White House (probably what is now the Trump International Hotel).
     Sidebar: The stationery was real. "THE WHITE HOUSE" in the letterhead was deep blue and available throughout the Executive Mansion for official correspondence by staff and overnight guests.
     Cognoscenti would know that a real letter signed by the president would be on limited edition stationery with "THE WHITE HOUSE" in apple green.

Flawless Personalization Made the Hoax Believable
Okay, it wasn't flawless. My name was spelled with two n's in the middle. Alas, my Denison has one n in the middle. Were it two n's, I would be in the Avery Dennison packaging and labeling family and rich as King Croesus. 
     But it was real enough to fool Peggy and me for a delicious few days!
     Compare this to the jackass who recently sent me a "personal" email with the following salutation:
Dear Hatch, Denny,
      I immediately clicked "delete."

What Triggered This Post: Email from a new Subscriber 

FROM: Henry Ne__   <henry@team_____.com>
TO: Denny Hatch
Today at 4:46 AM
Dear Denny,

Thanks for adding me to your mailing list.

I have been reading your 85 Point 'Checklist for Marketers' with interest. It's no criticism but sometimes we forget to practice what we preach - and I am as guilty of this as anyone.

See below what I mean. From the Checklist:

49. The computer is magical. It can print letters with personalized name, address and salutation at the top and blue signature at the bottom.
• If your letter is personalized, does the typeface in the personalization (date, name, address, salutation) match the typeface in the body of the letter?


Now see the email I received from you.


Same typeface I agree but different font size.

I would also have simply used the salutation 'Dear Henry'.

Henry
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
Denny Hatch's Reply to Henry Ne_____:
Dear Henry, 
     Good gotcha. Thanks for pointing it out.
     A guy who has been on and off my radar over many years is Robert Coates—I think I did some work with him a while back, but I'm damned if I can remember the client.
     Coates once said to me, "Do you know how to tell a true direct marketer—someone who loves direct marketing?"
     "Tell me," I said.
     "That's a person who is handed a list of names and addresses (street addresses) and immediately starts studying it—looking at the names and addresses, imagining the faces and homes of the people on the list."
     Coates nailed me. Any time I am handed a list of names and addresses—or even one name and address—I am stopped and begin to imagine the person or people whose basic info I am looking at. I am a sucker for lists.
The Magic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt is regarded as America's third greatest president. His use of "Fireside Chats" on the radio was brilliant. No ponderous, pompous Oval Office posturing or thunderous media events in stadiums pandering to his "base."

 Zenith Console Radio, c. 1940

TV did not exist in FDR's time Just radio. Just his ringing patrician voice for the family to hear on the Zenith console in the living room or the Philco table model in the kitchen.

The reason for his Fireside Chat success was this: before he went on the air to read his talk, he imagined a family gathered around the radio waiting to hear him—husband, wife, grandmother, children. He felt he actually knew the people he was talking to. The result, FDR was trusted and beloved by the whole country. He was at once calming, angry, emotional, reassuring, uplifting and inspirational.
     He won reelection by huge margins. FDR was the ultimate long distance marketer. Terribly crippled, confined to a wheelchair and carried like a baby from place-to-place in the arms of his African-American valet Arthur Prettyman, he could not get out and mingle with the electorate. The White House was his jail. Two trusted surrogates traveled the country and the world and related to him what they saw: his wife, Eleanor and unofficial "deputy president" and personal sidekick, Harry Hopkins.
FDR "Knew" His Audience—Personally
How did this rich, upstate NY member of the landed gentry get to "know" the people of his country? In 1927 he bought a 1700-acre spa in Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt opened the facility to Polio victims like himself. They were all ages, all backgrounds, all demographics. Rich, poor—all were welcome to live there and rehab in the magnificent swimming facility that was a constant 88 degrees year round. 

     When FDR was there in the pool, in the dining hall or around the campfire he loved gabbing with the people. That's how he got to know average Americans—their fears, their loves, disappointments and hopes.
Modern Technology—Phooey!
As a pre-TV (radio, newspapers and magazines), pre-Internet (snail mail) guy, I inherently do not trust technology. When I started this cranky blog I contracted with Constant Contact to maintain my subscriber file.
     I decided I did not want names coming directly into Constant Contact nor allow automatic replies going back to my subscribers/family from the Constant Contact bots.
     When someone sends me email—whether it's just a name and email address or a message—no automatic reply goes out.
     When you wrote asking to avail yourself of my services, I sent you a carefully crafted welcome letter. It requires one click from me to put into the body copy of my welcome message. But to satisfy my (very probably sick) neediness to feel I am truly interacting with my new subscriber/colleague/friend, I personally type the salutation, "Dear Henry ____,"
     Having typed your name and pressed "SEND" I know who you are—a member of my family of readers. I then hand-enter your name and email address into Constant Contact.
     So I screwed up. The typefaces matched; the sizes did not. As I said, "Good gotcha."
Two Reasons Why I Erred
1. I was careless. Sloppy.

2. The Creeps at Yahoo.
I have used Yahoo for a lot of years. I hate the bastards for a whole lot of reasons. Here's a damned good reason—Yahoo's naked theft of my private emails and selling the contents to strangers.
     For years, Yahoo has faithfully allowed me to use Verdana type (they call it "Modern") in my email messages. Lately, however, when I write an email in "Modern" type, for some reason the message goes out in Times ("Classic" in Yahoo-speak). My signature and address were in Verdana. The salutation and message was in Times. The whole thing was clearly impersonal. I said screw it, I'll make everything in Times.
     Same thing with type size. I have crappy eyesight—20/400 plus cataracts. I miss subtle differences. The salutation might be bigger or smaller.
     Not said on your part—but implied: I am a hypocrite. I don't give a damn.
     Well, I do give a damn.
     I do my best in this digital world to personalize the impersonal.
     For a guy 83, dealing with technology is a bitch. I will go to my grave trying to persuade the world that human beings are not simply blips of data.
     In short, I am sorry for my error. I am as offended at myself as you are with me.
     Thanks again for taking the time to write.
     Do keep in touch.
     And never be shy about giving me hell when I deserve it!
     Cheers.
P.S. Regarding your closing admonition:
You wrote:
>>I would have simply used the salutation 'Dear Henry'.<<
     My response: We have never met. Until now, I have never heard of you. I am a traditionalist who believes addressing a complete stranger by the first name is impertinent.
    For example, I wouldn't dream of addressing the President of the United State as Dear Donald...
      
• Regarding the honorific of Mr., Mrs., or Miss, you do not always know a person's gender by the first name. At my first job in publishing many years ago, the company had a longtime, very distinguished author of children's books, Noel Streatfeild, OBE. In my first week on the job I wrote a letter to Mr. Noel Streatfeild with the salutation, Dear Mr. Streatfeild. Noel Streatfeild was a woman. I got roundly reamed out by the president of the company.

• So IMHO, the proper salutation to a stranger is Dear [First name] [Last name].
• In my second letter to you, I addressed you as "Dear Henry." That's because your initial letter to me started, "Dear Denny." That was your signal to me that we are now on a first-name basis.

Takeaways to Consider
• "The two basic tenets of selling are:
     1) People buy from other people more happily than from faceless corporations.
     2) In the marketplace as in theater, there is indeed a factor at work called "the willing suspension of disbelief.
     Who stands behind our pancakes? Aunt Jamima. Our angel food cake? Betty Crocker. Our coffee? Juan Valdez. Anyone over the age of three knows that it's all a myth. But like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, the myths are comforting." —Bill Jayme, Legendary Freelancer

Always remember L.L. Bean's Personal Guarantee:

 This was not some nameless "We" of a faceless corporation. This was signed in blood by the owner himself who had brass balls that went CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

• On the subject of envelopes in your mail [and the salutation in your email]:
"People first look at their name. To see if it's correctly spelled. If the initials and title are right, it's for them!" —Dr. Siegfried Vögele (1931-2014), The Handbook of Direct Mail.

• In short, if you decide to personalize a message, getting it right is essential. If the person's name is wrong, you are incompetent and thereafter everything from you is suspect.

I hate Dear Sir/Madam or Dear Friend. But it's more honest than Dear Hatch, Denny.

### 

Word Count: 2,080



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 e-mail to dennyhatch@yahoo.com. I guarantee your personal information will not be shared with anyone at any time for any reason. I look forward to being in touch!

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

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