10 years ago I picked the name of my favorite science fiction writer, the late Frank Herbert, to be a virtual employee who I could direct cold callers to contact. He got onto every DM list on the planet. And even after moving my office twice, Thermo Scientific still sends him mail with special offers.
It all started when in 1999 when I was sharing an office on Newbury street in Boston with my future business partner, Fred Surr. I was a freelance copywriter, and even though I was a solo operator I named my company Captains of Industry (modest, that’s me). Soon after moving in I started to get a lot of sales calls. They’d ask, “Who’s in charge of your photocopier?” Or “Who’s in charge of your insurance?” It was all me, of course, and I quickly grew tired of telling them that. So, one particularly frantic day when I was asked, “Who manages your bookkeeping?” I blurted out someone else’s name, someone who didn’t work for me, someone who was, in fact, deceased: Frank Herbert.
Frank was my favorite science fiction writer, famous for his Dune series of books. I don’t know why I picked Frank at that moment, but I did, and soon I put him in charge of everything. I gave his name in response to every sales call, and gave him his own voicemail account. Within a few months, the list brokers for direct marketing companies got hold of Frank’s name and address, and Frank started to get mail. A lot of mail. After all, Frank was a very versatile fellow, and was managing everything from my 401k investments to my phone service, to my printing, insurance, copier, office furniture, office supplies, events, and everything else under the sun that’s part of running a small business.
Frank’s star at Captains of Industry rose steadily over a two-year period. When people called and asked to speak with him, I’d reply that he was unavailable, and since Frank Herbert had passed away in 1986, this was entirely true. Just when I was thinking poor Frank couldn’t be any more popular, I found a very curious voicemail for Frank from Senator Trent Lott’s office. Frank had apparently been nominated for an American Citizenship award. Hmm. I called the Senator’s office and explained that Frank could not respond personally (true), and he was really buried with work (sort of true), but I as the owner of the company would be happy to accept the award on Frank’s behalf, and would they mind sending it along. It turns out that it was a fundraising scheme. Frank would have to make a donation to the Senator’s reelection campaign in order to get his reward. I explained that this was not possible (true) and wished the Senator good luck in his campaign.
Years passed, and Captains of Industry grew. In time, I grew tired of the joke and removed Frank’s voicemail box. Today, December 9th, 2009, a full 10 years after I had started delegating work to Frank, he received a piece of direct mail from Thermo Scientific. Bear in mind that Frank “worked” for Captains when we were on Newbury street 10 years previous, and we’d since moved twice. But Frank still stayed on the direct mail list. The direct mail piece proudly announced to Frank that Thermo Scientific’s NeutrAvidin Products provided “ultra low nonspecific binding compared to avidin or streptavidin!,” and that Frank could now save 15% on his purchase. Needless to say, Frank did not jump at this offer.
Now, the whole point of spending money on direct mail, of course, is that it’s very direct and targeted. You don’t waste money on a shotgun approach that sends your message to millions of people who don’t care about nonspecific binding. Curiously, Thermo’s marketing agency had determined that Frank, a deceased writer working for an ad agency called Captains of Industry, was an ideal candidate for NeutrAvidin. Perhaps …. in some cosmic way …. Frank’s science fiction background somehow related to scientific products, but I can’t think of anything in the Dune series that related to things like Lysine residues. If I were Thermo’s marketing manager, I would certainly have some tough questions for my ad agency …. not the least of which would be why they are spending my money trying to get leads from the deceased. I would think it would be much more effective to use an inbound marketing approach with web videos and blog outreach, because trying to “reach targets” who are six feet under is not a recipe for success. As for Frank, he has nothing to say about it.
Tags: Direct Mail, direct mail lists, direct response, Lead Generation
There are good point here, but I think the main story is not so much the tools (inbound vs. outbound) but the quality of the approach. Thermo Scientific has a tough problem: How do you market to B2B decision makers where there are no “avidin or streptavidin” marketing lists or communities? This is a core problem all B2B marketers face, and it’s not solved simply by jumping to inbound marketing. The tough truth of any quality B2B campaign is that your marketing list must be continually groomed. Data quality is of the utmost importance, and not enough companies (or agencies) invest sufficiently in data cleansing activities. Simple things like CASS are now automated and close to free. Other approaches such as using a company that calls a list to verify the identity & presence of an employee in a company – necessary in volatile industries like Advertising – where your CMO one week may be a “consultant” the next.
Luis, thanks for your thoughts on this. I written lots of direct mail campaigns and I know that the DM industry does very well because of the measurability aspect. For ever dead guys name on the list (literally or figuratively) there are plenty of other names that are viable. For all I know, this particular DM piece could pull well. Who knows? But whoever is grooming these lists can’t be doing a very good job if they’re targeting Frank Herbert – at an agency no less – after ten years and two office moves. Maybe it was a bad list company. I do believe, however, that taking a chunk of the money allocated to DM and putting it towards educational, informative and engaging web content the pulls people in is a smart move. These days people are searching for info that’s helpful in their jobs, and if the content is interesting enough then blogs link to it and it gets higher in the search engines. Plus, all that paper sent in the mail, and mostly thrown out, is a huge waste – not to mention the carbon footprint involved.
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