Victoria's Dirty Secret

This week's Grist podcast alerted me that Victoria's Secret publishes and distributes more than 350,000,000 catalogues each year.

All of those zeros mean 350 million. Can this be right? Reuters offers a similar figure; I assume that both Grist and Reuters have fact checkers.

I was so horrified that I lost sight of the heart of the story, which was that environmentalists have pressured Victoria's Secret into using more environmentally gentle paper.

Check out also Victoria's Dirty Secret, created by Forest Ethics. (Presumably a charitable organization that is conscious in its use of direct mail!)

Most small businesses have no business using direct mail marketing. I used to work in a banking business that sent mail to millions of investors. (This was not direct mail for the purpose of marketing, but legally required documents like proxy statements.)

In this business, I learned the metric "a buck an envelope". Between postage, stamp, paper, envelope, it is pretty rare to send out a piece of mail that costs less than a dollar. This doesn't count the cost of gaining access to the addresses, whether you've gathered them yourself, or whether you rent or buy a list.

I've always heard that the response to direct mail is 2 - 4%. (Although when I went looking for confirmation of that metric, I found other expert opinions.)

Assuming a 2% response rate, when you send out 10,000 envelopes, you'll hear back from 200 people. Whatever you're trying to get people to buy had better bring in at least $50 per response.

To break even, each contact must generate $50 in profit. Remember, you're spending your profit.

You do the math: imagine that 200 people spend $50, but each sale costs you $40. You just spent $10,000 and got back $2,000.

But that is just the rawest form of cost-benefit analysis, and quite simplified. You might debate that some of these people will become repeat customers. Ok, yeah.

But what about your creativity, time, and effort to conceive the direct mailing? What about the carbon emissions generated to manufacture the paper, to deliver the mail? Take a moment to mentally trace the path -- and impact -- of the 9,800 pieces of mail that don't "hit".

Even the nanosecond of attention used by each recipient to decide: "trash or recycling?"

Your bottom line is not the only point of impact.

My real bottom line: how can all of this energy be put to the best possible and most conscious use?

The Power of Language

I used the word "creepy" in a recent post, in relation to some advertising that had been dropped liberally around my Lower Manhattan neighborhood.

The advertising was for a green building complex that had been dropped by the hundreds, if not thousands, in building lobbies. My opinion was that much of the energy used to produce this publication (from electricity to human creativity) would be dropped into recycling containers.

Here's the Merriam Webster definition of creepy:

1 : producing a nervous shivery apprehension

The post was about authenticity, and the fact that people use their intuition -- whether they know it or not -- to determine whether something is real.

I didn't use the word "creepy" in a conscious -- or mindful -- way. And in fact, I got a comment from someone involved in the project that the word "stung".

Ever since I apologized for making a hurtful comment, I've been engaged in contemplating: why did I use this word?

On one hand, it is easy for me to sit here in my apartment and hold forth on any old thing.

On the other hand, my intuition is physical, visceral. As in Merriam Webster's definition, I sometimes experience a "shivery" moment when I see or hear something that I like or do not like.

I have a visceral response to direct mail and other forms of mass advertising that use lots of pieces of paper, and human energy for production and distribution.

But I will not use the word "creepy" again without a lot of thought, particularly knowing that it can produce a visceral -- and negative -- reaction in someone I don't even know.