I have an AT&T cell phone and our office has an AT&T line for our fax.

My cell phone bill arrived in the mail the other day with a supercomplicated listing of what I pay for: taxjustforthehellofit, recoveryofsomethingfee, lagniappeforalgore, and all my calls. There’s an envelope for sending back a check and, last and least, some inserts. One insert implored me to get my bill sent electronically and Save a Tree; two other inserts tout AT&T services. First reaction, of course, is Save Your Own Goddamned Tree!

In eternal gratitude for our office fax line, AT&T sent a twice-folded (six panel) card in an envelope. Four of the panels contain nothing but the same single line that says, over and over, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, etc.

One of the panels shows what appears to be a credit card and some black type that tells us to just call and they’ll send a $10 gift card. Well whoopee. We pay $190 a month, $1080 a year, for that one line. AT&T will give us what amounts to a 0.925% rebate if we’re crazy enough to call and endure Gawdknowswhatsort of sales pitch to get it.

The body copy of the offer was obviously computer (not offset) printed so you just know there are a zillion different versions of the card. Maybe some much more important AT&T client was getting an $11 card.
Why not just send us a gift certificate good on our next phone bill? That’d be straightforward and worthwhile. Mmm, maybe that’s why they didn’t do it.

Besides, the card was folded too quickly after the computer printed the copy and it smeared more than somewhat.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

Lots of mail at home lately, mostly from good ol’ National Geographic plus banks and charities. Most of the charities sent a freemium – a sheet of cutesy pressure sensitive address labels with my name and address.

On the same day last week, eerily similar label packages arrived from Habitat for Humanity, VFW, Shriners Hospital, Alzheimer’s Association, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and March of Dimes. 6 different sets of address labels.

The only one of these mailers to mention Christmas, as opposed to some unnamed holiday, was the VFW’s. The others could have been celebrating Walpurgisnacht for all I know. We play the odds in this business and in the USA, the odds are any given DM package I going to go land in the mailbox of someone whose view of Christmas ranges from indifferent to enthusiastic.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma people included a tipped on nickel to “make a point” but, of course, March of Dimes had to double the ante and tip on a dime, and, of course, their point was much sharper.

The grapevine says the labels work pretty well right now but I hope these excellent causes are testing other stuff. Labels could get tired, fast.

Most of the bank stuff is weird. I have a Citi AAdvantage Mastercard and they sent me an offer for a Citi American Express AAdvantage card. That baffles me. Citi sends me blank checks for my Mastcard account at least once a month and that amazes me. All offers for new credit cards astound me; we’d be safer if they sent us loaded Smith & Wesson .38s.

Suppliers form a huge chunk of DMA Membership and all a supplier really cares about is the company booth at the annual convention and other DMA clambakes. It’s about making contacts to grow business.

Where do suppliers stand on the Gerry Pike rebellion? We’ll never know. None of them will say an anti-DM-management word in public. Why not?

It’s possible they don’t care.

On the other hand, there seems to be an underground trembling that if they don’t toe the management line their booths will be moved to Siberia at the back of the hall, permanently. Have they been threatened? No. Are they worried anyway? Probably.

On the other other hand, if suppliers’ buyers stop attending DMA events, booths will be a waste of time and money no matter where they’re set up.

They would be doing us all a favor if they wrote to the people who buy their SUVs. The message, urgent as it is, is pretty simple.

“Please note that ALL of our vehicles, including SUVs, come with turn signals. To activate a turn signal, first locate the stick thingy on the left side of the steering column. Then simply reach forward with your left hand, that’s the one holding the phone – have no fear, the person you’re talking to won’t notice – and gently move the stick down to indicate your intention to go left and up to go right. You will a hear a clicking sound. This is normal and it will cease as soon as you complete the turn. Next month: signaling a lane change.”

This came in the mail the other day. It’s from ADWEEK, a magazine about advertising. They want one of our art directors to subscribe.

Creative, ain’t it?

Who knows? Maybe it worked just fine, in which case you wonder if it’s ever worth all the bother of going out of your way to be creative

You might have heard that a guy named Gerry Pike has started a proxy war for control of the DMA board. He’s a board member himself but hasn’t been nominated for a new term.

The current DMA leadership is fighting back with, for instance, a feebly thuggish attempt at a cease and desist order, a flurry of emails and outbound telemarketing.

The interesting thing about all this is that the DMA, like many large organizations these days, could probably sail merrily along for a couple of years with no top echelon leadership at all.

Enron, GM, Chrysler, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Citibank, WaMu, Wachovia, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would not be any worse off today had their boardrooms and executive suites been empty for the past 10 years.

The legislature of the great state of Texas, our only successful large state, gets together every second year and for a maximum of just 140 calendar days. One old school Texas politician said that his state would be better off if they switched the numbers around and met every 140 years for a maximum of two days.

My impression, first as a semi-insider then as a non-member over the past 5 years, is that the DMA leadership, such as it is, costs members a lot of money and adds very little to DMers’ well being. The association itself is valuable, though. The staff is great, they know what to do and how to do it. The high mucky-mucks seem to be working hard for … the high mucky mucks.

Direct marketers have a simple question about everything: what’s the ROI? Bad enough when it’s 0, disastrous when it’s negative. What do we do when that happens? Pull the plug and start over.

Good luck.

It forces you to say something in >140 chs. Good practice.

Direct marketers start with lots of questions. Answers have to be relevant facts. We don’t care about opinions. No questions are out of bounds and there are no hissy fits when they’re asked.

The first round of Qs is about planning.
Why are we even talking about doing this? (If there’s no sensible answer, we stop and go out for martinis.)
How quickly can we learn everything about what we’re doing?
What’s the allowable?
What are we really selling? (Security, convenience, value, ego-stroking, etc.)
Assets (budget, database, personnel, suppliers, brand awareness, brand attributes, testimonials, spokesman, research, etc.)?
Who’s done anything like this and how did it work out? (Hint: if they keep doing it, it’s probably working out.) What did they do right? Wrong?
Who’s in the target audience, how many are there, what kind of people are they, how do we reach them?
Short term goals? Long term objective? Timing?

The objective (always just one) is realistic given the background we acquired when we learned everything relevant. Strategy is relevant to the objective.

The objective has real numbers with real dates: e.g. sell 5,000 Ford Explorers at an average price of $29,000 by the end of Q2, 2010. This scares the pants off non-DMers; we think it’s fun (doing the work and scaring the pants off non-DMers).

Then comes the whole mishmash of execution stuff: creative, lists, media, response management, tracking, offers, upsell, follow up sell … every one of which has a killer question behind it: What happens when we do this?

We test everything. We find out what works and we do more of it. We find out what doesn’t work and we stop doing it. We track response, conversion, CPO, LTV, referrals and we fine tune to get better and better. Most of all, we’re strictly accountable for everything we do.

Is there a large and powerful group that should do this sort of stuff and doesn’t? And what’s the worst thing that could happen if we replaced that group with a tight group of direct marketers?