Imagine this PR nightmare. Just as the anthrax scare hits the U.S. postal system, your company has printed and ready to drop a direct mail campaign specifically designed to
pique the recipients' curiosity: unmarked, hand-addressed black envelopes ... containing images of Satan no less.
Oops! "That whole strategy came into question. Imagine someone opening that in the middle of the anthrax [scare]," says Ken Schaefer, principal, Blanchard Schaefer Advertising
and Public Relations, who had this very campaign planned for October. Like many other direct mailers these days, Blanchard Schaefer looked to the Internet and quickly retooled the
campaign for electronic delivery, with the same collateral delivered in a series of self-opening image files within emails. "We found it to be a very effective strategy," says
Schaefer. "We got very good feedback from it."
Tighter corporate budgets were already moving companies to the more efficient electronic delivery of external and internal corporate communications, but the anthrax scare as
well as longer-than-normal postal delays clearly have accelerated these plans. "When October arrived we witnessed a 50 percent rise in sales of our software over the
August/September timeframe," says Mike Adams, CEO of personalized email tools maker Arial Software. Most of his clients are a bit cagey about this new interest in electronic
formats, however. "They don't always say it's [because of] anthrax, but they say that the whole playing field has shifted in favor of email."
Press outlets are less shy about admitting anthrax worries, since the media were principal targets of this attack. Many are asking to receive press releases via email now,
says Chris Burke, president, Business to Business Marketing Communications. Among his clients, "Of the people doing direct mail, most of them are inquiring about it, and we're
starting to proactively recommend it as well."
For internal communications, many companies are using mixed media to spare employees from traveling for face-to-face presentations. Some of Burke's clients now email each other
PDF or Powerpoint files and walk through them remotely via a conference call.
Learning to Drive Email
While obviously cheap, relatively safe and fast, the email alternative to direct mail does require new disciplines and considerations. First, of course, you need the addresses
of your database points. "If you are not asking for people's email addresses and permission to use them, you are missing a huge opportunity," says Schaefer. But even with a robust
database, email faces the same quandary as direct mail: cutting through clutter. For the black envelope campaign, which was promoting Blanchard Schaefer's own PR services, the
company used alluring subject headers such as "Hey Beelzebub," "Cutting Edge -- Yet Non-Threatening," and "No Babies Required" to keep these emails from suffering a quick delete.
Most of the rules of direct mail still apply in electronic formats, especially the need for eye-grabbing creative, but they must operate within a new field of restrictions,
namely multiple technological standards, uneven computer literacy among recipients, and limited bandwidth. "You have to make attachments idiot-proof," says Schaefer, so his
campaign eschewed fancy Flash plug-ins and used self-opening JPEG image files.
If the move to electronic delivery continues, whether because of budget or terrorist pressures, bandwidth is going to become a substantial issue for the industry, says Burke.
Text press releases are a good quick fix, easy to send and accessible by all, but they cannot replace the graphical collateral of full press kits. "That's going to require on our
part an investment in more bandwidth and the ability to send images in compressed fashion," he says.
In an even more complex way, email is not analogous to direct mail in many people's minds, so communications specialists will need to learn the rules of a different platform.
The new "underground joke" among techies is that "email viruses won't kill you," says Adams, but the fear of infection by email remains, so companies still need to find ways of
establishing trust with recipients, especially if they expect them to open complex multimedia attachments.
"What you can't remove is a sensitivity that email tends to be personal," says Schaefer. "People are reluctant to invade that space unsolicited, while they don't seem to have
that feeling about direct mail." Some form of personalization may help, either addressing the recipient by name or ensuring the subject line is, indeed, relevant to their
interests, but this, too, requires richer databases. And above all else in the nanosecond realm where users peruse their in-boxes with a finger on the delete key, you need to
establish relevancy and message immediately.
Back to Normal?
The same defense works against snail mail and email fears, says Mark Kitchens, deputy managing director, Public Strategies Inc.: maintaining an ongoing dialogue with your
constituency "so you don't surprise people. The challenge as a result of anthrax has been for firms or agencies trying to engage people they have never talked to before." Email
should be an important part of the mix, but it needn't replace direct mail entirely if the company has established a relationship with the recipients. While many of his clients
are now quicker to ask whether a direct mail drop is necessary within a campaign, Kitchens says most of his direct mail campaigns have been relatively unaffected by the scare.
And there is some evidence that people have a short memory when it comes to anthrax. At Blanchard Schaefer, the provocative black envelopes have started going out again, but
only because it was an ongoing campaign style with which its business audience was familiar. But the company, which apparently enjoys high risk maneuvers, is also employing a
campaign in which plain white boxes are mailed to mayors and key city officers around the country. The only change to these mystery boxes as a result of the anthrax scare has been
the addition of a small sticker with the sender's name and a toll free phone contact. According to Schaefer, only one of the many recipients has expressed any concern. (Contacts:
Mike Adams, 307/587-1338; Chris Burke, 919/872-8172, [email protected]; Mark Kitchens, 512/432-1772, [email protected]; Ken Schaefer, 817/226-8634)
Mailroom Mayhem
Edelman recently surveyed journalists on how the anthrax scare has changed the way their mailrooms operate. Of 464 respondents, 74 percent (343) say the terrorist threats have
had an impact on their mailrooms.
- 43 percent say their mail is being monitored
- 33 percent say they have always preferred email correspondence and the anthrax attacks have underscored that preference
(Mark Bennett, Edelman, [email protected]