Wednesday, April 29, 2020

#92 The Greatest Personalized Direct Mailing

Post #92 —Wednesday, April 29, 2020

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2020/04/92-greatest-personalized-direct-mailing.html
  Posted by Denny Hatch


The Greatest Personalized Direct
Marketing Mass Mailing in History

    This is it!  

    American Express Platinum Card Launch, April, 1986.


NOT!

Platinum Card Pitch, April, 2020

The late Gary Halbert was a flamboyant, hugely successful direct mail entrepreneur and copywriter. Throughout his career he proclaimed:

• People have two piles of incoming mail: the “A” pile and “B” pile.

• The “A” pile is personal stuff—bills, personal letters, business letters, a scrawled note from the kid in college asking for emergency money.

• The “B” pile is everything else. It has a printed BULK MAIL postage indicia in the upper right corner and blazing teaser copy that announces this is advertising mail.

• Halbert loved to amuse his audiences with a riff. “Imagine an envelope from your lawyer with a huge teaser: HERE’S HOT NEWS ABOUT YOUR NEW LAWSUIT!

• Everybody opens all of their “A” pile mail. If people don’t know what’s in an envelope, they’ll open it.

• The object for direct mailers: Get your “B” offer into the prospect’s “A” pile.

• Ergo: never use Bulk Rate and never use teasers on an envelope you absolutely want opened.

             Look at the Two Envelopes Above
Pretend these two letters arrived in your mailbox yesterday instead of 34 years apart. The envelope on the left is clearly meant for your “A” pile. 

 From WHO’S MAILING WHAT!, May 1987
TECHNICAL TALK:
If we had to pick the splashiest solo mailing to go out in six-figure numbers over the past two years, the American Express Platinum Card effort would win hands down). It travels in a closed-face 7-3/4" x 4-5/8" envelope of exquisite Artimus Text paper with platinum embossing and 1/8" platinum edge on the envelope flap. 

Inside is a 3-page personalized letter on matching paper with a reproduction of the card embossed in metallic platinum, and a metallic platinum edge at the top of page 1. The second and third sheets have the metallic platinum edge only. There is a matching Business Reply Envelope. The Acceptance Form is on slightly heavier stock. A beautiful 4-1/4” x 7¾" 16-page 4-color brochure spells out benefits. Interestingly, the only place the $250 price is shown anywhere in the mailing is deep in the text on page 3 of the letter. 

Why is this mailing so splashy? Quite simply because it is a rare example of direct mail technical perfection -- from a mailer willing to pay for that perfection.

It is produced by ABS in Wichita, KS, an organization that has 155 Diablo printers and over 200 people who match and insert all the components by hand. Most clients send "tape, text and art" and ABS takes the job through completion -- always guaranteeing to meet the deadlines that have been contracted for. For virtually all clients. ABS chooses paper and envelopes and produces mailings in which the outer envelope, order form and page 1 of the letter are personalized. Additional pages of the letter are offset and collated along with any brochures and the Business Reply Envelope.

For This Extraordinary Platinum Card Effort. Here's the Drill:
American Express ships in a load of single sheets of Artimus Text paper (with Consumer Card Group President Edwin Cooperman's signature pre-printed in blue on sheets to be used for page 3), matching envelopes and order forms. Each effort is completely typed on the same Diablo printer so there is an exact match -- outer envelope. page 1 of the letter and the order form. Because American Express is insistent that the entire letter be an exact match, pages 2 and 3 of the letter are also typed on that same Diablo printer, even though there is no personalization! 

The mailing goes out Presorted First Class with two 18-cent U.S. postage stamps.

Only American Express knows the actual cost because they are supplying paper and brochures. But an educated guess would be somewhere between $1000 - $1100/M [$2,300/M in 2020] and that's with no list rental (the mailing goes only to Amex cardmembers). 

While most ABS clients (Sotheby's, Porsche. Learning International, Value Line) have units of sale in excess of $75, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is using a personalized effort whose average unit of sale is $17; according to Dolores McDonagh at the National Trust, the ABS package pulls up to 20% better, with the increased response making up for higher costs. 

Many traditional mail order people would slit their wrists rather than go for such an outrageous cost-per-thousand. But American Express -- wisely, we think -- looked beyond CPM. The Platinum Card image is being upheld and enhanced. And members are pouring in at what must be a very attractive cost-per-order.

Sad Note: In 2017 Target Marketing closed down WHO’S MAILING WHAT! They trashed the entire archive of 200,000 mailings. It was an irreplaceable 35-year history of great years of direct mail. (“We needed the storage room,” they said.) 
     The mailing was never scanned, the copy lost forever. Above is the only reproduction of this masterpiece from the pages of WHO'S MAILING WHAT! Damn. Damn! DAMN! This was definitely an “A” pile effort. I was able to recreate the envelope and the order card. 


The letter:
Dear Denison Hatch,

The criteria for Platinum Card membership are quite demanding.

In fact, those ultimately chosen must be numbered among our finest American Express® Card members.

Invitations are extended only to those Card members who deserve—and would appreciate—the added convenience, financial flexibility and security this Card provides.

It is for this reason I recently extended you an
invitation to acquire the Platinum Card. Not only
because… blah, blah, blah.

NOTE: Dick Benson used to say if you can come up with a business model that enables you to call your customers “members”—giving them a sense of exclusivity—you can improve results by 15%. American Express was the only credit card company that flattered their customers by calling them “Members.”

Here was as a masterpiece of flattery and exclusivity. Only Gold Card Members were invited to move up to Platinum. It was a genteel, literate adult-to-adult communication. In short, “A” pile stuff. I loved it. I signed up.

Yes, I signed up? Was I nuts? Insecure?
Why spend $250 ($587 in today’s dollars)?
This was a period in our (relative) youth when Peggy and I did some Third World traveling—Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Belize. One of the fringe benefits was free travel insurance. If the worst happened, we would be airlifted out of the jungle to civilization for medical treatment and flown home. It was phenomenal added value. (I have since downgraded to Gold Card membership.)

                              Was the mailing successful?
When this one arrived in my mailbox, the offer had been mailed for over two years. By then, then the mailing had brought in a quarter-million Platinum Card members paying $250 a year for a cool $62.5 million a year in dues alone. To get these kinds of numbers. Response would have to be well into two figures.
  
                    Now Look at the 2020 Deal Killer
           And How I Was Grotesquely Insulted

“A letter should look and feel like a letter,” said the great guru Dick Benson.
     This letter I received last month was a polyglot of multiple typefaces, distractions, action devices and order mechanisms in the margins and at the bottom.
     Okay, so much for rule-breaking design by “Artistes” who prefer “Pretty” to “Profits” and their product managers who do not know squat about how to communicate.

 Note the line of copy in mouse type at bottom center. The text:
Please see the Additional Disclosures Insert for more details
For the record, my history with AmEx goes back to post WWII years.
• In the late 1940s, Ralph T. Reed, president of American Express, his wife Edna and daughter Phyllis used to summer at the Rockaway Hunt Club next door. They were our guests for cocktails two or three times a week. We liked them a lot.

• In 1950 Doubleday published the official corporate biography, AMERICAN EXPRESS: A Century of Service, by Alden Hatch, my father. 

• In 1956 I commuted to New York for a summer job working in the AmEx mailroom. 

I have been an American Express Cardmember since 1964.That’s 56 years. Never missed a payment. Absolutely pure record as clean as a hound’s tooth. (I’m a Gold Card Member now.) 

Takeaways to Consider
• Remember the lede of their original letter to me:
Dear Denison Hatch,
The criteria for Platinum Card membership are quite demanding.
In fact, those ultimately chosen must be numbered among our
finest American Express® Card members.

• Can you imagine sending a 6356-word mouse type “Disclosure Document” to a someone who has been your customer for 56 years and is “among our finest American Express Card members?”

• What am I? Some kind of petty crook out to screw American Express after 56 years?

• Put another way: Would you want to do business with a company that sends you an offer and includes a 6356-word CYA Disclaimer in unreadable mouse type? Yuck!

• "The large type giveth, the small type taketh away."
—Tom Waits

• My personal message to Ken Chenault, President of American Express: “Are you people out of your effing minds?”

• Computers do not know how to treat a “Member” as in a “member of my family.”

• “The computer is a moron.” 
    —Peter Drucker

• “All mail is opened over a waste basket.”
    —Leah Pierce, Copywriter

• “A letter should look and feel like a letter.”
    —Dick Benson

• Never, Oh Never allow artistes/designers, lawyers, accountants, or assorted bean counters to dick around with your direct marketing efforts!

PRIVATE OFFER: I scanned the “Disclosure Document” into Word so I could get a word count. Any subscriber who would like to see the raw scan of this 6356-word marketing travesty, email me: dennyhatch@yahoo.com

REQUEST: If I send you this phantasmagorical nuttiness, I ask you to read it and share your thoughts in the Comment section below. Thank you.

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Word count:1627


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

A Note About Denny Hatch’s Marketing Books
When North American Publishing summarily shut down its little book publishing division, all my direct marketing and business books were suddenly gone from the market. Some were available as “collector’s items” at many hundreds—and in some cases thousands!—of dollars. I have made arrangements with a Canadian marketer to republish some of these as Special Reports or White Papers. Will let you know when they are available. Thank you for your patience.

About Denny Hatch’s Novels
Meanwhile two titles are available. They are:
THE FINGERED CITY
How Mafia Marketed a Candidate
To Become Mayor of New York City

THE STORK
A Comedy About Breeding People 
 Kindle Edition: $2.99

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. 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… Write Me!
Google owns Blogspot.com and this Comment Section. If you do not have a Google account, contact me directly and I will happily post your comment with a note that this is per your request. 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

You Are Invited to Join the Discussion!

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

#91 Does Donald Trump Believe His Lies?

Issue #91 – Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Posted by Denny Hatch


"The self-deception that believes the lie..."
I wish I were in love again!
Babes in Arms, 1937
—Lorenz Hart and Richard Rogers 



 Donald Trump Is a Pathological Liar.
Question: Does He Believe All His Lies?
Donald Trump told 16,241 lies in his first three years as president.
     That’s 15 lies per day. 104 per week, every week of his presidency.    
     These are verifiable lies.
     He will say something that directly contradicts something he said on live TV or on Twitter yesterday. Or Last month. Or last year.
    Trump seems to have no memory of what he said in the past.
     He speaks with no knowledge of history. Of politics. Of Science. Of the Constitution.
     Yet, from the bully's pulpit he blurts out whatever nitwittery of the moment pops into his head.

The Entire A-Team Is Gone. Also the B’s, C’s, D’s and E’s.
A White House Now Filled with Frightened F’s.

Okay, it is widely agreed that Donald Trump is one sick puppy.

And everyone on the White House F-Team is scared to death of the guy, terrified of a personal presidential tweet. Fearful for their jobs. None of the cowering cowards on the F-team dares to question the Dear Leader or gently suggest how to steer him toward transparency, empathy and science.

The logical hypothesis: Since nobody dares tell Trump the truth, the president invents his own truths. The technical term is that he is living in a bubble of  “alternate reality.”

What I really want to know is: Does Trump know he’s lying?

Or like the Larry Hart’s lyric, does his "self-deception believe the lie?"

If he honestly believes his lies, then he isn’t lying.

Is he?

Backgrounder
Thirty-five or more years ago publishing consultant Paul Goldberg and I had as a client, Julian M. Snyder, a hulking guy with jet-black tousled hair and owlish horn-rimmed glasses who looked rather like Garrison Keillor, host of the legendary radio show A Prairie Home Companion. He was a world-renowned economist and publisher of the newsletter, International Moneyline.
    
Snyder achieved fame—and made a fortune for himself and his subscribers—by correctly calling every turn of gold during a 10-year ride, culminating in its Jan. 21, 1980 high of $850 per ounce, whereupon his clients made more money with judicious short sales on advice from Snyder.

Julian Snyder Discovers Dektor
At some point, Snyder came across The Dektor PSE Psychological Stress Evaluator. The technology of Voice StressTM  was invented in 1969 by two trained U.S. Army counter-intelligence polygraph examiners—Col. Charles R. McQuiston and Col. Allan Bell, CIA station chief in West Berlin and later Seoul.

In a nutshell, when people—men or women—are telling a deliberate lie, the voice exhibits stress. This voice stress is subtle—not perceptible to the naked human ear. But with modern electronics, this voice variation is detectible and obvious. 

THE PINOCCHIO MACHINE
Dektor PSE-101 Can Tell You Instantly
Whether or Not a Person Is Telling a Lie

The Bell-McQuiston machine was a huge technological advance. Old-fashioned polygraph machines—invented around 1916—are cumbersome, requiring wires attached to the body of the person being examined. 

Dektor, on the other hand reportedly can detect a lie instantly and accurately in any environment:
   • Face to face.
   • Listening in on the telephone
   • On TV or radio.
   • Even over a public address system.
   • It also works in any language.
     This is not “yes” and “no” stuff. Entire speeches and conversations can be analyzed and all the lies throughout revealed.

For example, if the president of Iran, speaking Persian, said Irani nuclear research was being done for peaceful purposes only and not at all for weaponry—and if he were lying—the machine would pick up the stress in his voice and chart it.

Col. Bell tested his new machine in front of his television set on the game show, “To Tell the Truth.” Twenty-five shows of three subjects each were evaluated. In each segment, two subjects lied about their name and occupation. One told the truth. Of the 75 subject evaluations, 71 were correctly called—an accuracy of 94.7%.

Julian Snyder summoned Goldberg and myself to a meeting at his office in downtown New York and stunned us with the news that he wanted to launch a biweekly newsletter, The Truth. It was totally alien to his core business—advice to investors on the fluctuations in the price of gold.

The Wild Premise
Julian’s business model: the editors would set up this machine in front of presidential speeches, press conferences, congressional hearings, perp walks and corporate stockholder meetings, and reveal who was lying and who was telling the truth. Investors and gamblers could make a ton of money in all kinds of industries.

It was the ultimate Pinocchio Machine!

Paul and I loved it! We immediately dubbed it “De Troot,” which is what we called it when we reminisced about those days.

I went home and wrote and designed a barn burner of a dry test mailing. Here are the three main elements:



Five Reasons Why It Bombed
• In retrospect, it was not a good idea to call President Ronald Reagan a liar in huge type on the outside envelope.

• It smacked of snake oil.

• This was pre-Internet. Snyder was selling old news. A twice-a-month print newsletter sent by mail meant subscribers would receive the revelations three or four weeks late.

• People want instant gratification.

• Demanding payment with order (as opposed to “bill me”) depresses up-front response. Asking for cash for an unknown product can be a deal killer. (Today, with online ordering, people expect to give their credit info knowing full well they’ll get a refund if dissatisfied.)


The Voice Stress Evaluator Today and Donald Trump
     The most recent iteration of the Dektor machine was a software program that could function on a desktop computer, iPad or Smartphone.

Set one of these fellas up in front of any presentation—political speech, business press conference, convention webinar, telephone call—and you’ll know instantly who’s Bee-essing you.

Why Set Up a Voice Stress Analyzer
In Front of a Donald Trump Appearance?
At first blush it would be a pointless waste of time. Trump lies all the time about pretty much everything. And every lie can be debunked.


But is Trump deliberately lying?

Does he know he’s lying?

Or is he so caught up in his cockamamie alternative reality that he believes he is spewing absolute truths?

The Voice Stress Analyzer can tell when the voice is stressed. A stressed voice does not absolutely, positively guarantee a lie is being told. Remember this paragraph earlier in this post:

Col. Bell tested his new machine in front of his television set on the game show, “To Tell the Truth.” Twenty-five shows of three subjects each were evaluated. In each segment, two subjects lied about their name and occupation and one told the truth. Of the 75 subject evaluations, 71 were correctly called—an accuracy of 94.7%.

In short, I want to know if Trump’s voice is ever stressed—and if so, when is it stressed?

If it’s not stressed when he’s telling obvious lies, it adds an entirely new dimension to our understanding of the muddled hash of a brain inside the golden noggin of the 45th President of the United States.

The End of Dektor
Alas Dektor got into a nasty squabble with another voice stress company and was hit with a huge punitive fine of $850,000 for damages for intentional false advertising. The company went out of business in 2019.

But OMG! I’d love to resurrect one of these Pinocchio Machines and set it up in front of the TV during a Trump press briefing!

     The furtive sigh
     The blackened eye
     The words "I'll love you till the day I die"
     The self-deception that believes the lie
     I wish I were in love again
                    —Lorenz Hart
   

Related Stories:
Investigation and Evaluation of Voice Stress Analysis Technology

The History of Voice Stress Analysis: The Original Dektor Counterintelligence and Security Inc.
https://www.cvsa1.com/history/the-history-of-voice-stress-analysis-the-original-dektor-counterintelligence-and-security-inc/

NITV Federal Services Wins Massive Lawsuit Against Arthur Herring/Dektor Corp. https://www.cvsa1.com/journal-of-continuing-education/nitv-fs-wins-massive-judgement-against-dektor-corporation/

Even in Default, Damages Must Still Be Shown https://tushnet.com/2020/02/18/even-in-default-damages-must-still-be-shown/
 



 

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Word Count: 1329


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 

Denny Hatch
dennyhatch@yahoo.com

A Note About Denny Hatch’s Marketing Books
When North American Publishing summarily shut down its little book publishing division, all my direct marketing and business books were suddenly gone from the market. Some were available as “collector’s items” at many hundreds—and in some cases thousands!—of dollars. I have made arrangements with a Canadian marketer to republish some of these as Special Reports or White Papers. Will let you know when they are available. Thank you for your patience.

About Denny Hatch’s Novels
Meanwhile three titles are available. They are:
THE FINGERED CITY
How Mafia Marketed a Candidate
To Become Mayor of New York City

THE STORK
A Comedy About Breeding People 
 Kindle Edition: $2.99

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. 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… Write Me!
Google owns Blogspot.com and this Comment Section. If you do not have a Google account, contact me directly and I will happily post your comment with a note that this is per your request. 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

You Are Invited to Join the Discussion!