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This little piece of harmless fantasy is dedicated to my nephew, Raymond Swanton... who shares my fascination of Lewis Caroll's Wise old Walrus.
Copyright to Robert Hayes-McCoy
Could it be possible that direct marketing people have got it artistically wrong... for all these years?
Take the simple plain brown envelope for example! Look at it carefully and what do you see? I'll tell you! You see a true - one could almost say priceless - work of art in its purest purgative abstract form. Now, I bet you've been getting the humble brown envelope wrong all these years too!
That's the problem with us professional direct marketers. Mention the 'plain brown envelope brigade' to us and we get all coy. That's because we don't see ourselves as artists.
And we should, you know.
Clever bunch, artists! They've got it all sewn up. And people respect them enormously for it too. Just look at all those government grants and large slices of lottery money that they manage to cotton on to ... year after year.
And how do they do it? Simple! They just talk artistically about everything they do.
For example, they say things like 'art is about getting back to earth'... 'discovering (again) the rhythm of life and suchlike.
To a true artist, a framed picture of a plain brown envelope would surely evoke levels of bliss that are quite unknown to us direct marketers.
They would conceptualise about the sensitivities of the unique juxtaposition of each minute wooden fibre as it goes through the metamorphosis of becoming rich amber coloured paper.
They would talk in terms of hidden human needs - the ability of the envelope to stir the inner heart and create a response that can only be described as ... success!
All good heady stuff... but when you think about it, getting a response out of an envelope is our job!
Of course we've got our own vocabulary to describe the inner mysteries of what we do. But it's hard to give the appropriate depths of feeling to words like ... stuffing, de-duping, demographical breakdown, response analysis and so on.
With words like this it's small wonder that we're not exactly swimming in lottery lucre or buried under a deluge of government grants.
Mark my words carefully! The time has come for us to change - change drastically - our tactics. From henceforth client meetings should go something along these lines:
Picture the scene: The client is waiting nervously for the Direct Marketing expert to arrive. He - or indeed, she - glances furtively around the room to make sure that there are no garish pictures on the wall that might upset the creative temperament of the true direct marketing artist who is about to make a dramatic entrance. The door glides open and enters the most exotic DM artist imaginable.
D M Artist: 'ah, I see that everything is set up for our little private unveiling ceremony. Perhaps the client would like to pronounce a few short words before we decide on the medium that we will work with'.
Client: 'On behalf of my colleagues, I would like to present you with a small token to convey our gratitude to you for taking time off from working on your latest masterpiece to help us with our little miniature.
DM Artist: (Carefully folding and pocketing the proffered cheque in inside pocket) 'Thank you ... thank you... I have this feeling close to my heart that today we will release the creativity's within. Let me show you the envelope that I selected to strike the right cord. Feel the fibre...!
Client: But would the post office take good care of this?
DM Artist: Aha! Have no fear of that. This is only the riposte vehicle, as it were. The beautifully composed reply envelope that goes within the outer integument of your mailing ... or in plain English, it lurks within the outer envelope, which I shall now present to you.
Client: (Loud audible gasps of astonishment.) It reminds me of Thxysovitch... how wonderful. How intricate that pre-printed stamp looks up there on the top right hand corner. One can almost feel the human hand reaching out to respond ... etc etc
Note carefully the client's artistically inspired response immediately above and see how ( if we all work together on this) in no time at all everyone will be talking to us in our new language.
Could it be possible that direct marketing people have got it artistically wrong... for all these years?
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