The Newest Junk Mail Hater
A fatuous business model based on creating anger
September 2007 By Denny Hatch
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In the News
For-Profit Crusade Against Junk MailPALO ALTO, Calif. — Pankaj Shah may be the only chief executive in Silicon Valley striving to put himself out of business. He is the founder of GreenDimes, a small business with big plans to stop junk mail while aiding the environment. If Mr. Shah has his way, millions of tons of unwanted mail will go the way of pesky phone solicitations. And the planet, not just consumers, he says, will reap the rewards. GreenDimes is one of several companies nationwide begun in recent years to organize information about a customer’s unsolicited credit card offers and money mailers, or no longer desired catalogs, and then perform the legwork to halt the flow.
—Laura Novak, The New York Times, September 6, 2007
Compared to spam—the ultimate time sucker—a little daily junk mail (which can be opened over the recycling bin) is dream stuff.
And. by the way, I love the term, “junk mail.”
Years back, any mention of the term “junk mail” in the media brought huffy letters from members of the direct marketing community demanding an apology from the offender.
When the great West Coast copywriter, the late Bill Jayme, was asked what he did for a living. “I write direct mail solicitations for magazines,” he said, “such as Atlantic Monthly, BusinessWeek, Civilization, American Heritage and many others. High-class junk mail. I call it ‘junque mail.’”
Jayme went on to say people love junk mail—and junk.
“Vintage car buffs love junk yards,” Jayme once said to me. “Antique collectors love junk shops. For a brief period, Wall Street had a love affair with junk bonds. Vacationers love to head for the Caribbean with a pile of junk fiction. And what would a Hong Kong fisherman be without his j**k?”
General agencies hate direct mail because it is accountable and for years have tried to persuade their clients that it is the ugly little step-sibling of advertising.
Junk mail—direct mail—is in fact the aristocrat of advertising.
Pankaj Shah’s Master Plan
Pankaj Shah is founder and CEO of GreenDimes, a company that is hoping to put direct mailers out of business by generating anger at unwanted mail and its alleged destruction of trees and damage to the environment.
One of Shah’s citations is the WildWest Institute’s statistic that 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce 4.5 million tons of junk mail, with 44 percent of that thrown away unopened.
(For the record, more than 90% is thrown away unopened.)
According to the crawl on Shah’s Web site, he has stopped 1.6 million pounds of junk mail, planted 320,000 trees and saved $4 million gallons of water.
Shah—with 50,000 members and 16 employees—has a dream: to stop 95% of all junk mail.
Actor Matt Damon, who sits on Shah’s board, did the talk show circuit to promote the GreenDimes Web site. Included on his rounds: “Oprah,” who mails tons of junk mail solicitations to get subscribers to the magazine that bears her name.
Takeaway Points to Consider:
* Direct mail is the aristocrat of advertising.* Direct mail is the only way to economically talk to your customers that is (1) guaranteed to reach all of them, including those sans Internet access and (2) guaranteed not to be inadvertently deleted amidst the avalanche of Spam.
* With the Can Spam Act and the Do-Not-Call Registry, direct mail is once again the workhorse of direct marketing.
* If you do not have an in-house expert or a consultant that is familiar with every aspect of direct mail, hire one or the other—or both.
* Direct mail is the only advertising medium with a broad and varied enough palette to successfully sell highly complex products and services.
* Without junk mail, the Postal Service would be virtually out of business and the cost of a First-Class stamp would be somewhere between $5 and $10.
* According to the Direct Marketing Association, every $5.60 spent on direct mail generates an average of $70 in sales.
* In the international marketplace where theft and piracy are rampant, direct mail is the best secret medium to use for testing the efficacy of a new product or service.
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition:
“For-Profit Crusade Against Junk Mail,” The New York Timeshttp://tinyurl.com/2yzcxd
Pankaj Shah’s GreenDimes organization
http://www.greendimes.com/
American Forest & Paper Association
http://www.afandpa.org/
Companies Mentioned:
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