Express-It

Scented mailer gets attention!

Reaching your target market with a well-crafted message may take many forms. One that has been a part of the marketing-communications mix for a long time is direct mail.

Cleverness wins out every time. It doesn’t have to be high-tech, just well executed. Sometimes the cleverness is including a simple thing that sets the mail piece apart from all others. I have used direct mail for years successfully for my clients, and many of my pieces have been well-received and through them, I have established a recognition for effective communication in this medium. In my experience, I have found the simplistic approach is usually better. It seems the more money put into a piece, the flashier it becomes, and the recipients are more wooed by the piece than the message — usually not the intent, unless ‘ego’ is involved.

Such is the case of a political direct mail piece I caught wind of over the weekend. I mean this figuratively speaking thankfully, not literally — you’ll see why…

If you live in the United States, you may well realize the quantity of mail is increasing this time of the year along with seasonal catalogs, and political mailings. Admittedly — partisan politics aside —  if you were to throw most of the political mailings into a pile, it would be hard to distinguish between the candidates sending them. Possibly on the majority of the pieces the names and faces could be interchanged, and the basic campaign statements and meanings would remain the same. Please don’t mistake this statement to be a political one, because that is not intended. I believe this to be true. (However, this seems worthy of spending some time considering, no matter what your political bent.)

With the increasing glut of mail delivery and the fact that so many of the political pieces are designed similarly, garnering attention is only part of the challenge if you are a political candidate. If you are a politician running for office, the next step is getting the voters to remember your name. There is a percentage of folks who will go to the polls and cast their votes based on name recognition. As the stakes grow, obviously it takes more than a familiar-sounding name to win an election, especially at the state or national levels.

According to a New York Times article appearing in Saturday’s edition, New York residents received an interestingly-designed campaign piece from Carl P. Paladino, a Republican candidate for governor. Although I haven’t personally seen it, from the picture of it I have seen, it may look a lot like many of the other political campaign promotional pieces received.

The main tagline on the piece says “The STINK of corruption in Albany is overpowering” On the front it reads “Something stinks in Albany” The positioning statement still doesn’t exactly set it apart from the rest of that mail pile either, does it?

But what’s really interesting about the piece is how it integrates the message and the medium. Upon opening the piece, it emanates the smell of trash, which worsens as it remains open. It is reported to have the small of rotting garbage, possibly onion or garlic — no one really knows for sure — but all agree it stinks!