Jayme & Ratalahti - Creative Team of the Century (3,454 words)

by Denny Hatch

If any organization has put a stamp on modern direct mail, it's not the U.S.Postal Service, but rather the recently retired, two-man creative team of Pittsburgh-born freelance copywriter Bill Jayme and Finnish designer Heikki Ratalahti.

In a four-decade partnership, their stylish direct mail solicitations launched some three dozen magazines including New York, Smithsonian, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Air & Space, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street, Worth, Saveur, Tufts Nutrition Letter, Mother Jones and the Harvard Medical School Health Letter. In their heyday, Jayme-Ratalahti had a five-month queue of publishers and circulation managers, hats in hand, ready to pony up $20,000 to $40,000 for a single direct mail package—not bad for two weeks' work, but well worth it when the launch mailing brings in so many subscribers that investors will eagerly pop for $5 million to $10 million, or more, to start the magazine.

The Beginning

In the late 1940s, Jayme ran out of money during his senior year at Princeton and moved to New York, where he became a messenger at Young & Rubicam, a major Madison Avenue advertising agency. On the side, he wrote for television and had a drama produced at the old "Studio One." When he applied for a job at Time-Life, no editorial positions were available, but the legendary Frank Johnson offered him a job in the circulation department.

More than once over the years, Johnson has complained how he hates being famous for the so-called "Johnson Box"—that headline at the top of a direct mail letter, usually surrounded by a rectangle of asterisks. In fact, Johnson doesn't believe he invented it. He would much rather be remembered for the giant 17˝x22˝ circulars that he created for Time-Life and, later, American Heritage—those splendidly gaudy bed sheets that kept on unfolding until they dominated everything in the room.