Why it’s important – Part 1
BACK ISSUE**
You see them on television’s Sunday news shows like Meet the Press. Corporate image commercials for a murderers’ row of companies and industries that have less than stellar reputations with the general public. Businesses like Altria Group (née Philip Morris) or DuPont or Pfizer. They want you to see their good works, hoping you’ll think better of them as you hear their side of the story.
As I am sure you realize, we in circulation marketing (or as one of my clients calls it “audience development”) work in a generally notorious, if not nefarious industry too. After all, “junk mail” and “spam” are not terms of endearment.
But I, for one, view what we do in the circulation department as noble. Equal to what our vaunted cousins do in the editorial department (however distant they wish us to be).
Despite working in publishing, we get lousy press. So some years ago I created a series of four ads that made that point. I sent them to our trade magazines, Folio: and Circulation Management, and to our trade organizations, the MPA and the DMA. I invited each to put their own logos at the bottom, and adopt them as their house ads on a space-available basis. I was trying to barn raise an image campaign for professionals in circulation management. Hoping to improve our profile at least to the level of, say, “Big Tobacco.”
Well like a lot of things in direct mail, my idea garnered no response. So I offer these resurrected and updated orphans to you, dear reader. With the same invitation. Put your logo at the bottom and circulate them to those who may not think as highly of you as I do.
As I noted, I created four of these. This is the first (text below). I’ll post the other three in the weeks ahead.
**What’s a “back issue?” Ideas and opinions I had before I had a blog.
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[Text of ad above]
A free press? Without America’s circulation professionals, it’s a hollow promise indeed.
The constitution guarantees the right. But it’s circulation professionals who make it real. Circulation directors and list brokers, subscription agents and fulfillment managers, copywriters and graphic designers, printers and lettershops, telemarketers and postal workers—millions of dedicated Americans—who make it possible for news and views, issues and ideas to find and reach eager subscribers.
Readers who might not otherwise improve their homes with Family Handyman. Start a new business with Inc. Understand the world with The Economist. Fashion a personal style with GQ. Test their brainpower with Games. Or delight in any one of 19,419 other magazines, newsletters, and newspapers now in circulation.
Our tools are direct mail. Subscription cards. Coupon ads. Television. Radio. Email and the Internet. Employing everything from sweepstakes to free gifts, we’ve created a vibrant and ubiquitous, efficient and effective marketplace that’s as hard to ignore as it is vital to our economy.
Call it junk. Curse it as spam. Toss it away. Turn the page. Click delete. Send no money now—or ever if you so choose. But you ought to defend it. And the people who create it.
Circulation professionals. We promote a free press.
