90% of the classic direct mail packages I get at home come from charities, causes, politicians or good old National Geographic.
          I have a dozen on my desk at the moment: six in #10 OEs, one in a #9, four  in the 6” x 9” format, which I’m not fond of, one 7” x 5” and one 7 5/8” x 5 1/2”. I want to look at the letters which fascinate me.
          The #9 package has a short letter from the editor of National Geographic’s Traveler magazine. It’s pretty good even though it’s disguised as a lift note on one side of a single 7” x 7” sheet of paper folded to 3 1/2” x 7”. Here’s the outside front:

          There’s a lame attempt in the letter to manufacture a meaningful difference between tourist and TRAVELER. In real life, it’s a mundane distinction, isn’t it? A tourist is a traveler who goes to a place to see what there is to see. A non-tourist traveler goes because he has to, like a refugee, business traveler, someone moving to a new town, someone going back home, going to a convention, heading off to war.
NG Traveler’s editor seems to think tourists are uncool. Maybe he finds the Bermuda shorts, explorer hat with chin strap, sandals with socks and sun block off-putting. Here’s the letter.

          Not bad. I haven’t seen a letter with the writer’s photo on it for a while. I imagine this one’s here because the editor looks like a guy who might have been playing canasta in Hanoi with Ho Chi Minh when the last US chopper lifted off our embassy roof in Saigon. 
          The serif font is a good size and easy to read. Best of all, the first two paragraphs are about the reader. My guess is that this would appeal to someone who’d die of embarrassment if anyone thought her a tourist. 
          I think it would be better as a real letter, front and back of an 8 1/2” x 11”, with a few examples of the places on which National Geographic Traveler has shone its light. A few small type testimonials in the margin would help, too – little snippets:
“We read the article
about the Hutu B&B
in Kigali and decided
to go. A tad too
essentially unique if
you ask us.”
Tom and Mary J.
Teaneck, NJ

          I’d try giving the reader more credit – elevate her to my own lofty level – and use that platform to build on shared experiences.