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Many years ago, I got a request from a lawyer to be an expert witness on behalf of a major publisher of books and magazines that was facing a nasty lawsuit.
A test mailing went out for a diet book, and the art director came up with a revolting photograph—a montage of four self-portraits of a stark-naked elderly man in various stages of weight loss, from gross fat and disgusting to simply disgusting. The photographer-model was paid a royalty.
The fact that I was grossed out mattered not. The mailing became a control and the publisher mailed millions—and was about to rake in millions when the photographer-model surfaced and claimed the publisher had not paid him royalties for the rollout.
Oops.
It was inadvertent, said the publisher. That did not stop the guy from suing the publisher for theft of copyright. He wanted all the money spent on the mailings, all the revenue generated from the mailing (including list-rental income), all revenues from book sales and a fat penalty to boot.
Add up all the square inches of type and design in the mailing, and this photograph took up maybe 1⁄70 of the space. But the guy wanted the moon. The lawyers came to me as a supposed guru in the world of junk mail. (It was Peter Drucker who said that people called him a “guru” because they could not spell “charlatan.”) The lawyers’ challenge to me: assign a percentage of importance to each element of this direct mail package—outside envelope, letter, circular/brochure, order device, lift pieces and BRE. It was their theory that I would assign maybe 20 percent of the importance to the brochure. Since this guy’s naked photos took up 1⁄20 or 5 percent of the brochure, they could offer to pay him 5 percent of 20 percent or 1 percent of the cost of the mailing as the penalty plus the royalties due.
An Impossible Challenge
Assigning importance to each element of a mailing is not easy, because everything shifts dramatically depending on when you do the analysis.
Quite simply, when the envelope arrives, it represents 100 percent of the effort. “All direct mail is opened over the waste basket,” said freelancer Lea Pierce. If the envelope is trashed before it’s opened, the entire mailing—100 percent—is lost.
“The envelope has two purposes and two purposes only,” said freelancer Herschell Gordon Lewis. “One: to get itself opened. Two: to keep the contents from spilling into the street.”
At the moment of arrival, the envelope is 100 percent of the mailing. Once opened, it is suddenly 0 percent as the other elements take over.
About Mel Martin
In 1974, Martin Edelston founded Boardroom Reports, a little newsletter for people in business. Up his sleeve was the world’s slowest copywriter, Mel Martin. He could take six months to create a mailing package. Where many writers dash off an outside envelope as an afterthought, Mel Martin would spend a week writing, rewriting and generally agonizing over the 10- or 15-word teaser on an OSE.
Mel Martin was a genius. “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” said Thomas Edison.
In my opinion, Mel Martin was at least 50 percent responsible for Marty Edelston’s business growing to $125 million a year in revenue.
Mel Martin’s secret was his invention of “fascinations,” a series of irresistible one-liners that got people to open his envelopes. His greatest fascination was a seven-year control: What Never to Eat on an Airplane.
If your revenue from a mailing is $X, and you can get twice as many people to open the envelope, your revenue will be $2X.
Few marketers, writers or designers spend enough time on their OSEs—or their e-mails—even though, at one point, they are 100 percent of their success.
P.S. The lawsuit described at the start of this column was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Denny Hatch is a freelance direct marketing consultant and copywriter. Visit him at www.dennyhatch.com, or contact him via e-mail at dennyhatch@yahoo.com.
A test mailing went out for a diet book, and the art director came up with a revolting photograph—a montage of four self-portraits of a stark-naked elderly man in various stages of weight loss, from gross fat and disgusting to simply disgusting. The photographer-model was paid a royalty.
The fact that I was grossed out mattered not. The mailing became a control and the publisher mailed millions—and was about to rake in millions when the photographer-model surfaced and claimed the publisher had not paid him royalties for the rollout.
Oops.
It was inadvertent, said the publisher. That did not stop the guy from suing the publisher for theft of copyright. He wanted all the money spent on the mailings, all the revenue generated from the mailing (including list-rental income), all revenues from book sales and a fat penalty to boot.
Add up all the square inches of type and design in the mailing, and this photograph took up maybe 1⁄70 of the space. But the guy wanted the moon. The lawyers came to me as a supposed guru in the world of junk mail. (It was Peter Drucker who said that people called him a “guru” because they could not spell “charlatan.”) The lawyers’ challenge to me: assign a percentage of importance to each element of this direct mail package—outside envelope, letter, circular/brochure, order device, lift pieces and BRE. It was their theory that I would assign maybe 20 percent of the importance to the brochure. Since this guy’s naked photos took up 1⁄20 or 5 percent of the brochure, they could offer to pay him 5 percent of 20 percent or 1 percent of the cost of the mailing as the penalty plus the royalties due.
An Impossible Challenge
Assigning importance to each element of a mailing is not easy, because everything shifts dramatically depending on when you do the analysis.
Quite simply, when the envelope arrives, it represents 100 percent of the effort. “All direct mail is opened over the waste basket,” said freelancer Lea Pierce. If the envelope is trashed before it’s opened, the entire mailing—100 percent—is lost.
“The envelope has two purposes and two purposes only,” said freelancer Herschell Gordon Lewis. “One: to get itself opened. Two: to keep the contents from spilling into the street.”
At the moment of arrival, the envelope is 100 percent of the mailing. Once opened, it is suddenly 0 percent as the other elements take over.
About Mel Martin
In 1974, Martin Edelston founded Boardroom Reports, a little newsletter for people in business. Up his sleeve was the world’s slowest copywriter, Mel Martin. He could take six months to create a mailing package. Where many writers dash off an outside envelope as an afterthought, Mel Martin would spend a week writing, rewriting and generally agonizing over the 10- or 15-word teaser on an OSE.
Mel Martin was a genius. “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” said Thomas Edison.
In my opinion, Mel Martin was at least 50 percent responsible for Marty Edelston’s business growing to $125 million a year in revenue.
Mel Martin’s secret was his invention of “fascinations,” a series of irresistible one-liners that got people to open his envelopes. His greatest fascination was a seven-year control: What Never to Eat on an Airplane.
If your revenue from a mailing is $X, and you can get twice as many people to open the envelope, your revenue will be $2X.
Few marketers, writers or designers spend enough time on their OSEs—or their e-mails—even though, at one point, they are 100 percent of their success.
P.S. The lawsuit described at the start of this column was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Denny Hatch is a freelance direct marketing consultant and copywriter. Visit him at www.dennyhatch.com, or contact him via e-mail at dennyhatch@yahoo.com.
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