Letters to the Editor

After reading Richard H. Levey's article “Mad Money” (August), I just have to say that my mail is replete with starbursts and discount offers. And I never, ever, get anything in my mailbox with “soft fonts like Avenir and New Astor.” I didn't even know those fonts existed!

Never before has a typeface made me feel inadequate. (Sigh.)
Rachel Hunt
DPR Group
Germantown, MD

I was beamed back a generation or two when I read Russell Kern's article “On the Rebound” (August).

It was a clarion call taking me back 75-plus years to the beginning of my career in direct mail. This was the era of Victor Schwab, Earle Buckley, John Caples, Bob Stone, Walter Weir, Joan Manley, Max Sackheim, Bob Johnson, Red Dembner, Ed McLean, Les Wunderman and a host of other icons of the business. It is these men and women whose imagination and creative skills lifted direct mail out of the scullery into a major communication medium.

I saved the name of Edward N. Mayer Jr. for special mention. Ed donated his time, talent and energy to direct mail. Without a question, Ed has educated more direct marketing professionals in the basics of the business than any other individual, this writer included.

Ed is best remembered for his basic formula for direct mail. This was the 40/40/20 principle of assigning “percentages of relative importance” to the three direct mail elements: list, 40%; offer, 40%; and copy, 20%

Before Ed forged this formula, it had run the gamut of different values. First it was list, 60%; offer, 30%; and copy, 10%. After several more mutations, the 40/40/20 principle became cardinal. Now Mr. Kern has a new basic formula: audience (list), 30%; offer, 30%; message, 20%; and cost, 20%.

If a percentage of relative importance is getting back to basics, I guess I'd have to agree with Kern. But let's wander back a generation or two when these formulas were “dreamed up.”

Direct mail was tossed by management into a category called “collateral” along with point of purchase and sales promotion. Junior copywriters and trainees were given the creative assignment. Any talented writer was turned off by the realization that creative copy was only worth 10% of the mix.

The tide shifted when talented direct mail professionals like Frank Johnson and the others mentioned at the beginning of this letter began writing brilliant and imaginative copy. Results were outstanding — they put profit on the bottom lines.

These successes had a ripple effect. Ad agencies took a closer look at direct mail, and at the urging of clients, the agencies set up direct departments. Managers convinced of direct mail's importance involved themselves in every aspect of creative development.

In this time of rising costs and economic confusion, along with other problems, any tired old formula has become list, 100%; offer, 100%; and copy, 100%.

Nothing less than the very best in all these areas can succeed or survive in today's economy.
Bob Hemmings
Hemmings IV Direct
Pasadena, CA