I'll start with a barebones list of why I hate
Direct Mail. And then I'll go to ridiculous lengths.
1) The environmental impact
2) It wastes time
3) Unfair bulk pricing
4) It's a sign of Commercialism run amock
5) It degrades advertising
1)
Environmental
impact
All bulk mail ends up in the trash. The vast
majority of bulk mail ends up in the trash unread.
A 3% return
rate was the national average (Forbes, 12/27/2004) and it's declined to 0.3% (Dow Jones Newswires,
Monday July 24, 2006). That
means for every response, a one ounce mail item generates over twenty
pounds
of trash (even the one that gets a response ends up in the bin).
75% of junk mail ends up in the trash unopened (Campaigns and
Elections, Dec 2004/Jan 2005).
And the laminated ads with metallic inks... there's no better way to
kill a compost heap. Every year, junk
mail creates 2.1 million tons of solid waste- that's more than all
bathroom tissue and paper products combined! 28 billion gallons of fresh water
are used in production each year! Over 350,000
dump trucks are needed to haul away that much unrecycled junk mail (MSNBC.com 3/15/2006).
A significant detail is that the waste
doesn't end up in the trash at its point of origin. The cost for coping
with it (collecting it, storing it, and
disposing of it) is all borne by the recipient. Mailers may pay for the
postage, but that's not the full price. And, the pollution of
groundwater and air (from the paper mills at the mails origin and the
dumpsites at its terminus) are communal expenses that we all pay
through
greater health care costs and stolen quality of life. Some common
chemical pollutants from dyeing include sodium alginate, oxidation
agents, and urea (Dyes
and Pigments, Feb. 2005).
2) Time
wasted
Opening an envelope takes time. Granted, it's
only moments, but it adds up to quite a lot of time. On an average day,
I receive 3 or 4 envelopes in the mail. At 20 seconds an envelope, that
adds up to a minute a day. Over the next year, that makes for 312
minutes (6 days x 52 weeks), or 5 hours and 12 minutes. My life
expectancy is around 75 years, so, assuming that I made it onto mailing
lists by the age of 20, I'll have wasted 17159 minutes (312 minutes x
55 years - 1 minute for that last set of sweepstakes entry forms that
go to my estate unopened). In other terms, that's 11 days, 21 hours,
and 59 minutes of unpaid work I'll have done! The tax toll alone is
around $300 denied to the government!
Most of the direct mail envelopes are pretty
sneaky about announcing their contents. The "Urgent Items Enclosed!"
label may be dishonest, but it certainly is a dead give-away.
"Subscription Interruption," "Complaint Form Enclosed," and "Audit
Details," are just a few of the ones that might get under your radar.
Advertisers refer to this as 'breaking through the ad-creep'. I've
written ad copy before, and it takes time to come up with the truly
catchy. I'm talking about more than a minute a day. That's time the
copy writer could use writing novels that would inspire us to
greatness, or engaging in investigative journalism, or even curing the
common cold. This volume of time wastage upsets my Cornucopian roots
(or, if you don't Wikipedia, try my own explanation
of cornucopian beliefs).
Napoleon once said "Ask me for anything but
time." Okay, so he said it in French, but you get the gist. Time is a
resource that is vanishingly rare and highly personal. It's simply
boorish for someone else to be able to take my time and not offer
anything of value in return. In olden days, we could resort to stoning
the offending person if they didn't leave us alone.
But, even with advances in modern pharmacology, I can't really throw a
stone all the way to a mailing center in Salt Lake City.
3) Unfair pricing
for bulk mail
I like
my mail carrier and hate to see him dealing with all the
schlock that makes him work ten times as hard as he should have to.
Most people who think of Direct Mail, if they defend it at all, defend
it on the grounds that it funds our Postal system. Bullshit.
Bulk-mailers float their ultra-low
rates on the full rate postage everyone else pays. Bulk mail operates
on the
"since-it's-already-there" premise - the system is paid for by everyday
customers, who get bills through it, send letters home, and collect
stamps. Since the mail carriers already run the routes, there's very
little marginal cost to add more mail into the system. So, the bulk
mailers pay significantly less and pump large numbers of envelopes into
the
system (pulses of which are more likely to overload the
sytem and
require overtime). The USPS website claims 80% of volume is business
mail. In 2005, the USPS handled more
than 100
billion pieces of “standard mail,” which produced $18.9 billion dollars
in revenue.
See how far the "since-it's-already-there"
model gets you the next time you take the tollway.
"There's already
some traffic on the road. So, I'll pay half the toll
and drive a fleet of semi-trucks through the gates all at once.
Whoohooo!"
UPDATE
12/6/2005: This just in:
"Fiscal 2005 was also the first time
advertising mail has topped first-class mail in volume. The post office
handled more than 100 billion pieces of what it calls standard mail,
compared to 98 billion first class letters. Both were up and total mail
volume rose 2.7 percent to 212 billion items, the agency said."
UPDATE 2/6/2008:
According to the Associated Press ("Postal Agencies Respond to Mail Decline" February 3, 2008):
"In the United States,
first-class mail volume has dropped 7 percent since 2001 -- an average
of 1.3 billion fewer letters, postcards and bills each year. A 15
percent boost in bulk advertising and other discounted mailings has so
far offset only some of the loss in revenue."
4)
Commercialism Run Amock
There's something obscene about forests being
uprooted to sell
thigh cream. And there's a deeper problem in "Valued Customer" or "Dear
Resident" commercialism. Business relationships should be built on
mutual trust, not a purchased mailing list and an offer that's too good
to turn down. It's my opinion that the best advertising supports a
medium, rather than just propagating itself.
Direct Mail accounts for 10% of all US media
expenditures (Graphic Arts Monthly, Sep. 2004, Vol 76, Iss 9, p25) and
is currently growing at the rate of 5.6% per year. The average American
gets 1.7 pieces per day (Campaigns & Elections,
Dec 2004 / Jan 2005 Vol. 25, Iss 10, p76). In the US,
households receive 6 credit card offers a month, up from 4.6 a month
the same time last year (Time, 10/18/2004).
UPDATE 1/26/2008: According to this
site, the average American
receives 41 lbs of junk mail a year. Ouch.
UPDATE 3/20/2008: I sold
my shares of International Paper after reading a memo that they released.
International Paper is a company choosing to put their bottom line
ahead of their business customers profits and the general happiness of
the public. They're actively campaigning against legislation that would
allow recipients to opt out Direct Marketing. Never
mind that these laws would help advertisers target readers who actually
want their mail - IP fears any legislation that would make direct mail
more efficient at the cost of their business volume. Selfish pricks.
5)
Advertising Run Amock
Advertising is tolerated for a pretty simple
reason; it pays for content we want. Your favorite television show
wouldn't exist without a partnership between the network and
Coors/Mattel/Proctor & Gamble/AOL/McDonalds/Timberland/Whatever
Inc. These national brands wouldn't exist without a national consumer
base, so they get something from the model. And, large scale
competition generally brings price down (and occasionally brings
quality up). So, we consumers get Friends on the air and cheap popcorn
to eat while we watch it.
But, that doesn't happen with direct mail.
Imagine
someone creating a 24 hour tv commercial network, and then scrambling
it in with all the other channels. You'd find some way to jam the signal, wouldn't you?
Direct Mail : Advertising
as
Chain Mail : Love Letters
Here's some new news: Direct
Mail Marketers are fighting back against Do-Not-Mail list initiatives.
For anyone who points out that you can sign up for their personal lists
and there's no need to pass laws or take direct action, here's the
proof that they don't want consumers to be able to opt-out of junk mail.
