Direct Mail Advertising Goes in the Trash

As more people think green and are ecology-minded, the average household receives about 200 pounds of junk mail per year. Meanwhile, the average phonebook weighs about 4 pounds and kills millions of trees. Because half of all adults neither use their junk mail nor open their phone books, that means 100 pounds per household of wasted paper and 2 pounds of wasted phone books. A lobbying group has formed claiming that junk mail is actually good for the environment. They call it “advertising mail.” It saves gas and reduces traffic jams. No lie! Check out www.mailmovesamerica.org. It’s time we started putting things into perspective. The direct mail industry doesn’t have much of a face; there’s no big brand name or no TV, radio or newspaper promotion behind it. It just slips into the mailbox every day. And most people’s first stop between the mailbox and the door is the trash can, where most of it winds up. There’s too much waste in advertising. It’s giving the industry a bad name. Every advertiser feels like John Wanamaker, the magnate who pioneered the concept of department store and in 1874 printed the first-ever store advertisement, who believed that half of his advertising worked and half of it didn’t – and he didn’t know which half was which. If the Internet fulfills its promise of delivering greater advertising efficiency, let’s hope it wraps its digital tentacles around direct mail and squeezes hard.