This came in the mail the other day and I responded immediately. The Salvation Army is one of the few charities I actually trust. Smile Train and the NYC Rescue Mission are two among a few others.

This is a nice and simple old school package. The Army uses its wonderful tagline perfectly. The Soup & Shelter Club incorporates two of the things the Army does with a compelling curiosity element. Club?

Inside is a straightforward letter, simply written and in a large-ish serif font with indents and double spacing between paragraphs (hence eminently readable). The salutation is the classic: Dear Mr. LAST NAME.

Major Fernando Martinez, Area Commander (of, I assume, the Miami area), thanks me for past support and makes a simple argument that the Salvation Army would find it helpful to have a steady stream of revenue for planning purposes. Makes sense. Now what?

Hmmm. I give them my credit card or bank info and they use that to get $10 a month from me. $10 a month is not a problem, yet, but ORP (Obama,Reid,Pelosi) might make it a problem any day now. So I’m aboard but I don’t want anyone, not even the Salvation Army, to access my accounts willy-nilly. I send a check for $120 and ask them to trickle it out over the year.

A couple of nits, one major and one minor. $10 is not a big deal but that low dollar amount is not mentioned until line 5 of page 2. I’d mention it a lot earlier. That’s the major nit. Major Martinez’s signature appears beside a spot color photo of the premium so the signature could have been in blue but it’s in black. That’s the minor nit.

I had no clue what IPOWER was and, after reading the letter in this package, I still don’t. The company appears to have some connection with Google. A signed lift note from a Google exec would have made the connection more clear not to mention making it really clear that Google approves of this mailing.

The letter starts off on the wrong foot with a Dear FIRST NAME salutation, and then goes downhill. It seems to be selling something to do with Google AdWords which we already use.

The letter is a dog’s breakfast. It’s written in the faux chatty style of an unrelenting midway shill and it appears in a tiny sans serif font. It’s difficult to read, well, not really difficult, just enough to be annoying. About halfway down the letter, there’s a subhead that promises three reasons to use Google AdWords. Four reasons then appear. Not one of them mentions the offer.

The whole letter is about using AdWords. Wouldn’t you think it should be about using IPOWER to access, get involved with, test, (whatever) AdWords? The only benefit to dealing with IPOWER is that you’ll get $100 in free advertising and it’s not worth it once you read the small type.

Best of all is that IPOWER seems to find direct mail a more effective tool than AdWords. Otherwise why wouldn’t they try to reach us through AdWords instead of snail mail? A head scratcher.

Winner of Battle of the Creatives? The Salvation Army by a TKO 15 seconds into the First Round.