#190BLOG POST  - Thursday 22 June 2023

Postedby Denny Hatch

Part I:

The Secret of Successful Direct Marketing:

Create a “Willing Suspension of Disbelief.”

The Introduction of the Up-up-up Market
American Express Platinum Card.

Aboveis a tacky, crappy reproduction of the most exciting, exquisite mailing I everreceived in studying more than 100,000 pieces of junk mail over the 30-year life span ofmy cranky newsletter, WHO’S MAILING WHAT! It was the staggeringlybeautiful launch package of the revolutionary American Express Platinum Card in1984.

Ourestimated cost to produce this mailing — paper, printing, inserting and postagewas roughly $1.00 each in the mail. (A mind-blowing $2.93 in today’sdollars!)

ShortlyI will share with you the amazing specs of this extraordinary marketing effort— a personal “me-to-you” First Class Postage offer signed in blue ink with theactual signature of AmEx’s top panjandrum, Consumer Card Group President Edwin Cooperman.

About the “Willing Suspension ofDisbelief.”

“Two basic tenets of selling are that (1) people buyfrom other people more happily than from faceless corporations, and that (2) inthe marketplace as in theater, there is indeed a factor at work called “thewilling suspension of disbelief.”

      “Who stands behind our pancakes?  Aunt Jemima. Our angel food cake? BettyCrocker. Our coffee? JuanValdez.  Anyone over the age of threeknows that it’s all myth. But — like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy — themyths are comforting.”

—BillJayme, Legendary Direct Mail Copywriter in a letter to DH.

“Directresponse marketing is not advertising in an envelope.”

— Bob Hacker, Founder & CEO of The Hacker Group.

OSE — Outside Envelope — for the Platinum Card mailing. Highest quality paper, printing, personalization, simplicity and elegance. Embossed silver faux platinum card at upper left. Two actual U.S.P.S. 18¢ postage stamps affixed at right. No crass teaser copy. It has the look and feel of an actual letter.

Simple Order Card. Dark band across the order card top was a raised strip of silvermetallic faux platinum (also atop each of the three pages of the letter).  No pain-in-the-neck B.S. of interrupting the ordering process by requiring the applicant to hunt up a credit card account number. The mailing was sent to AmEx cardmembers only, and obviously Ed Cooperman's computers knew them by name and address.

The letter was a masterpiece of copy and design. "A letter should look and feel like a letter," said guru Dick Benson.

The signature on page 3 was in blue ink. "Always use the writer's actual signature, and not a neat-'n'-tidy phony computer font," said the great copywriter Malcolm Decker. "The signature is your salesman's handshake."

From themoment it was retrieved from your mailbox, and you started reading the three-pagepersonalized, hand-typed letter with faux platinum top edges on the gorgeous heavystationary and reply card, there was no question in your mind that you were beingindividually contacted and treated as true worthy by a high panjandrum atAmerican Express. Sure, it was all done by machinery, but it had the look andfeel of a personal invitation sent direct to you from his office. It was flatteringas hell!

My greatfriend Bill Farley, VP of a leading bank in Minneapolis, sent me his mailing asa sample with this gleeful note: “I was accepted for membership!”

My 1986 Write-up in WHO’S MAILING WHAT!

TechnicalTalk

Ifwe had to pick the splashiest solo mailing to go out in six-figure numbers overthe past two years, the American Express Platinum Card effort would win handsdown (540AMEXC01186NYDX). It travels in a closed-face 7-3/4" x 4-5/8"envelope of exquisite Artimus Text paper with platinum embossing and 1/8"platinum edge on the envelope flap. Inside is a 3-page personalized letter onmatching paper with a tiny reproduction of the card embossed in metallic faux platinumon the letterhead and a metallic platinum edge at the top of page 1. The secondand third sheets have the platinum edge only. There is a matching BRE (Postage-paidbusiness reply envelope). The Acceptance Form is on slightly heavier stock. Abeautiful 4” x 7¾" 16-page 4-color brochure spel1s out benefits. Interestingly,the only place the price of the card is mentioned is page 3 of the letter.

Whyis this mailing so splashy? Quite simply because it is a rare example of directmail technical perfection -- from a mailer willing to pay for that perfection.

The Diablo Printer: Automatic Typewriter witha Daisy Wheel

Itis produced by ABS in Wichita, KS, an organization that has 155 Xerox Corp. Diabloprinters and over 200 people who match and insert all the components by hand.Most clients send "tape, text and art" and ABS takes the job throughcompletion -- always guaranteeing to meet the deadlines that have beencontracted for. For virtually all clients ABS chooses paper and envelopes andproduces mailings in which the outer envelope, order form and page 1 of theletter are personalized. Additional pages of the letter are offset and collatedalong with any brochures and the BRE.

Forthe Platinum Card effort here is the drill: American Express ships into ABS aload of single sheets of Artimus Text paper. Consumer Card Group PresidentEdwin Cooperman's signature is pre-printed in blue on those sheets to be used forpage 3. 

“Always use the writer's real signature on the letter,”said copy wizard Malcolm Decker. “It's your salesman’s handshake.”

Outside carrier envelopes and order forms are on matching paper and inmatching type. Each element is completely typed on the same Diablo printer sothere is an exact match -- outer envelope, page 1 of the letter and theorder form. Because American Express is insistent on the illusion (a.k.a.creating a willing suspension of disbelief) that the entire letter be an exactmatch, pages 2 and 3 of the letter are also typed on that same Diablo printer,even though there is no personalization! The mailing goes out Presorted FirstClass with two live 18-cent U.S. postage stamps affixed to the outer envelope.Did Cooperman’s secretary actually lick the stamps???)

OnlyAmerican Express knows the actual cost because they are supplying paper andbrochures. But an educated guess would be somewhere between $1,000.00 - $1,010.00/M.That’s with no outside list rental, because the mailing goes only to Amex cardmembers.

Isthe mailing successful? It's been mailed for over two years. There arecurrently a quarter-million Platinum Card members paying $250 a year ($732 in2023 dollars). The product being sold is a little plastic card, so cost ofgoods sold is peanuts. That’s virtually pure profit of for a cool $62.5 milliona year ($183 million in today’s dollars) in dues alone. To get these kinds ofnumbers response would have to be well into two figures.

Mostof the ABS clients (Sotheby's, Porsche. Learning International, Value Line)have units of sale in excess of $75. The National Trust for HistoricPreservation is using a personalized effort whose average unit of sale is a paltry$17; according to Dolores McDonagh at the National Trust, the ABS package pullsup to 20% better, with the increased response making up for higher costs.

                              A Quick Aside on “Memberships”
Legendary magazine marketing guru Dick Benson extolled the benefitsof having members rather than ordinary subscribers. He said, “Magazines linked to membership affiliations — like theNational Geographic and the Smithsonian — renew better than plain subscriptionsby 10% or more.”

The Platinum Card & Why I Acquired One.

Forstarters, I had close family ties to American Express. In 1950 my father, AldenHatch, was hired to write the official history of the company, AmericanExpress: A Century of Service. Our house on Long Island bordered the secondfairway of the Rockaway Hunt club (founded 1878). In my boyhood AmEx presidentRalph T. Reed, his wife Edna and daughter Phyllis vacationed in a suiteoverlooking the Hunt Club golf course. They were constant visitors at thehouse. In 1956 I got a summer job in the mail room of American Express. And veryearly in my career when I was book traveler (salesman) flying around thecountry I acquired an American Express Green Card and, shortly thereafter, agold card.