News
 Direct
Mail Horror Story
By James E. Sullivan, Project Manager, Optic Nerve
Direct Marketing
I love my direct mail; I look forward to reviewing
every piece of the mail in my mail box. The best
part of direct mail marketing is not how creative
the package is, nor how good and responsive the list
is, nor how strong the offer or how compelling the
story about the kit is to me. What is really
exciting about direct mail marketing are the
disaster stories about the pieces of mail you never
see in your mailbox. Move closer, this could happen
to you at any time. Some of the best direct mail
pieces you will never see. Here is just one more
mailing kit you won’t see in your mailbox.
There are a lot of disaster stories out there, some
are just plain sad, and some, didn’t even make the
mailstream. One such sad story began with the
creatives and the clients decided that they wanted
to have a singing microchip sing a popular song
about their product. The song selected was very
current, easy to remember as well as short and
sassy. The chip was inserted into a finely designed
box with a small product sample and wrapped securely
with a pleasing to the eyes box wrapper. The 50,000
pieces were all hand inserted, properly sorted and
matched up with a personalized letter, wrapped, and
again personalized, stamped and ready to mail.
Leaving the mailing house with all of those
perfectly wrapped packages, the truck driver entered
the local USPS loading dock. Unfortunately the truck
driver was having trouble entering the bay
perfectly, in frustration, he jammed the truck into
reverse gear and slammed into the rear of the
loading dock with a resounding thud.…what happened
next was heartbreaking melody. Most, if not all of
the micro chips accidentally got activated by the
sudden jarring of the truck, singing all of the
words of the pre-programmed song in their entire
50,000 pieces chorus. The orchestra did not stop,
all of them kept repeating their songs, all at
different times and in different segments of that
popular song, over and over again. The back door of
the truck was not even allowed to open, the
Postmaster at the dock would not allow the truck to
discharge its cargo until the singing stopped
completely.
Undaunted, the truck driver informed the Postmaster
that after a few minutes of settling down to normal
and balanced levels, the singing would all stop and
a silent truck would prevail. The bellowing of the
50,000 voices was not to be silenced, even after a
brief waiting time. Alas, silence was not going to
happen. The Postmaster kindly asked the truck driver
to take his melodic shipment back to the mailing
house. As you can imagine, neither the production
manager, nor the creative director, or even worse,
the client, were amused. The microchips continued
singing their hapless song for about two days,
before their chip life died. With that, the mailing
died as well.
All 50,000 pieces were dead, none could be saved,
the entire mailing piece was lost, hundreds of
thousand of dollars wasted on singing chips. What
did we all learn from this… maybe having your mail
talk back to you is not a good idea.
---Source:
James E. Sullivan is the Project Manager of the
direct mail consultancy agency Optic Nerve Direct
Marketing (www.opticnervedirect.com). He’s also a
Favorite Author for Melissa Data’s
Direct Marketing Advisor.
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