LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON'T GET THEM STARTED

I am appalled at the self-righteous, attacking, personal tone that Ken Magill took toward Keri Smith and Jeff Pitcher in his column (Don't Get Him Started, March).

What an ignorant writer. I can't believe such a poor piece of journalism would get that far.
Christine Scott
Clinical Art Therapist
Santa Barbara, CA

I have just read Ken Magill's March column and wish to complain.

If Mr. Magill wished to open up an intelligent discussion about the use of ads in blogging, then he has failed. Instead we got a nasty, personal attack against two people who have done nothing more than to literally put their money where their mouths are (rather than accepting advertising money on their blogs) and stand up for their principles.

I believe it is right to question the way that advertising seems to interfere with more and more aspects of daily life, certainly with some of the more insidious methods used. (Recently in the United Kingdom we had a campaign aimed at children, via their mobile phones, with the notion of keeping it “secret” from their parents.)

While Mr. Magill makes the point that “…for the vast majority of bloggers, swearing off ads would be akin to me swearing off dating Victoria's Secret models,” perhaps if more grassroots bloggers made a stand against blog advertising then the popular blogs would question whether their integrity is worth a little more than what Amazon, etc. are paying nowadays.

There's a time and a place for advertisements (such as in Keri Smith's illustrating work for various companies), and perhaps blogs should not be that place. Should the Internet be purely about buying stuff? How about connecting people, building relationships, educating and entertaining ourselves?

Whether or not one agrees with Mr. Magill's viewpoint, the unacceptable fact is that he has set out to humiliate Keri Smith and Jeff Pitcher; his tone is vindictive, verging on bullying. In contrast, Keri Smith's writing tends to be gentle and inspiring — even in the post on her site in which she responds to Mr. Magill's comments.

I know which writer I prefer, and know also that I won't be checking out Direct's Web site again. Please think twice before allowing your writers to abuse people in this way.
Katherine Mitchell
Bristol, England

Ken Magill's recent piece blasting Keri Smith and Jeff Pitcher's Web site (AdFreeBlog.org) was quite puzzling.

I am having trouble understanding why anyone — in particular a purported journalist — would waste so many inches on spewing sophomoric bile in response to something so benign. The only way that Web site could be less in-your-face is if it were invisible.

Quite frankly, as a reader of Keri's blog and as a blogger myself, I find the concept of proclaiming that one's blog is ad-free a little ridiculous. In my world there are bigger fish to fry, and I couldn't care less about ads on blogs one way or another.

But for Mr. Magill to spend so many words in what is tantamount to character assassination of someone so well-intentioned and harmless is completely unjustifiable.

Was he simply low on ideas? What a shame.
Emma Gibson
San Pedro, CA

I just wanted to say that what Mr. Magill wrote was a piece of total and complete defecation. For the life of me I can't imagine why you published such a steaming pile of feces.

So, whatever it is you're doing there at Direct, I hope that Ken Magill's piece is not representative of the magazine's overall tone. If it is, then I wish you a speedy demise.
Nancy Scorse

LIES…AND REALLY BIG LIES

I'll agree with Herschell Gordon Lewis that “Your call is important to us” is a lie (Curmudgeon-at-Large, April), but it's a lie tinged with b.s. The really BIG lie, the flat-out untruth of the call center era, is this one: “Due to seasonally heavy call volume…” “Seasonally heavy” my a….

You can call these clowns any month, any time of the day or night and get the same “Due to…” message. What they're really saying is that their one or two operators are overwhelmed at any time. The irony here is that supposedly intelligent people actually expect someone else to believe this nonsense. (Would any of you perpetrators of this exercise care to try and defend this BIG lie?)

Don't they realize that this just makes their companies look stupid? They spend tens of millions to create an image and a “brand” for their product or service and then blow it all with stupid b.s. like “Your call is important…” and “Due to seasonally….”

Who watches? Who cares?
Lewis R. Elin
DR Consultant
Chicago

CURMUDGEON-ON-BLOGS

Reading Herschell Gordon Lewis' Curmudgeon-at-Large column on the blog craze (March), two recent news items came to mind. One was a widely circulated news story about how the U.S. population is so sleep-deprived. The other was an op-ed piece in Advertising Age pointing out how Americans are spending more time than ever watching television.

I'm puzzled. Where do people find the time to read and write all those blogs? Do only the sleep-deprived blog? Does everyone blog while watching TV? (Who feeds their pets when they're blogging?)

Early on in the mainstreaming of the Internet, some people predicted it would become the “great equalizer,” enabling anyone with a computer to become a “publisher.” With very few exceptions, blogs represent the equalization of the inane, as if that were really needed. Too many people with way too much time on their hands, if you ask me.

But enough writing. My bichon just barfed on the rug. I need to upload video of it to www.getalife.com.
Steve Ellwanger
Press Counsel Group
Darien, CT

Just because Herschell Gordon Lewis thinks all blogs are trash doesn't make it so. That's his opinion. After all, what does he do in his column each month but give his opinion. The only difference is that he appears in print and bloggers communicate over the Internet.

He says, “If I want fact, I'll go to Google or CNN.com.” How naive of him to think that journalists don't have their own agendas. Let's remember that it was bloggers who blew the whistle on Dan Rather and CBS and their “fact-filled” stories.

Are some blog sites junk? Yes. Are some bloggers poor writers? Yes. Are all print journalists and writers Pulitzer Prize winners? I don't think so.
Judith Hadley
Minneapolis

GIVE-AND-TAKE WITH THE MAVEN

Liked Tom Collins' comments about [Georgia-Pacific's] “free hand” ad, but his makeover lacks the visual attraction of the original ad (The Makeover Maven, March). It just doesn't grab the consumer, and probably would be missed by all but those rare human beings who will read every ad they see…certainly not soccer moms.
David Hersrud
The Hersrud Co.
Sturgis, SD

Tom Collins replies: I agree that my makeover is not as much of a “grabber” as the original ad. My problem with the latter is that it didn't grab any reader in particular who had any problem in particular.

I could've done a pure brand ad which would do a much better job of selling the Dixie UltraStrong plate by devoting the entire ad to its virtues. But the name of this publication is Direct. I wanted to bump up direct responses to Dixie's Web site, where the reader would become more deeply involved with and sold on Dixie products.

So I reached out to consumers and homemakers (and soccer moms) who are attracted to value coupons, sweepstakes entries, and home and family ideas, tempting them to log on, while still promoting Dixie's UltraStrong plate.

It's a tradeoff to which I suspect no one knows the answer as yet. Is it better, in a case like this, to make a shallow brand impression on 1,000 readers and minimize Web site appeal? Or better to achieve a much deeper effect on 100 of those readers by devoting more of the ad to persuading them to visit and click through the brand's Web site?

I'm an art director for a company in Chicago and I read Tom Collins' columns in Direct. But after seeing his March piece, I realized I can't go on reading without getting upset over some of his design and marketing ideas.

I do agree with some of the suggestions he makes from time to time (again, some of them!) but when it comes to redesigning whichever ad he picks to analyze, his design suggestions are worse and seem way too dull to even get a second glance.

It's obvious to me that he's stuck in the paste-up mode and his design marketing ideas are stuck in the 1950s.

Sorry, that's my 2 cents!
Gabriel Guzman

Tom Collins replies: There's no doubt in my mind that the right art director might make some of my makeovers a little more handsome. But you have to consider what the words and pictures are saying.

Better design than mine might improve readership, response and sales by, let's say, 5%. But the right appeal to the right people with a functional, if not beautiful, design could result in an increase in effectiveness and response of 25% or 50%, or in some cases even 100% or 200%.

As they still teach students of architecture (I hope), form follows function. And when I consider how many ads I see where the copy's readability is sacrificed to the dictates of fashionable typography, I have to conclude that many art directors would make my makeovers worse rather than better.

Too many art directors, I fear — and I trust you are not one of them — approach making a print ad purely an exercise in design without having studied the great marketing thinkers, or considered deeply who the prospects are and what might interest and move them.

Good ad design should serve that interest. It was true in the 1950s, the 1980s, the '90s, and is still true today.

The Georgia-Pacific makeover which riled you so was an especially difficult challenge because it required combining the sale of a rather mundane household product with the sale of the attractions of an advertiser's multibrand Web site.

Just a quick note to let you know I really enjoy Tom Collins' column in Direct.

He has fantastic insight into making ad copy work for folks who might actually purchase the product — what a concept
Bryan D. Stapp
Chief Marketing Officer
Quicken Loans
Livonia, MI

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