Being Direct – Lester Wunderman

We calculated that by making the name change in our offer, we had, in one year, cost the club $5 million in sales and $1 million in profits. Another problem had surfaced when we began with four divisions and immediately discovered that the behavior of members in each division was different, even though they all joined the club from the same ad in the same medium.

In the early days, the “Jazz” division attracted many members who didn’t pay their bills, and the club wanted to drop this “deadbeat” division. Later, we found that a division that attracted bad members helped us quarantine them. We kept the “Jazz” division but restricted the credit offered to its members until we learned which of them might become delinquent. Later, “Rock & Roll” was the lead ing “deadbeat”division: Chubby Checker single-handedly attracted more members who didn’t pay their bills than any other artist did.

The really bad times came when all the divisions became “deadbeat” divisions. That could have meant the death of the club. So far, we had made most of the media work by imposing credit limitations to control bad debts. We had learned that coupons written in pencil were more apt to be delinquent. So were those in which not all the questions asked in the coupon were answered. We hired graphologists to analyze handwriting as predictors of creditworthiness.

We devised new credit questions. The easy ones didn’t reduce responses, but neither did they reduce credit losses. Tough questions such as: What is your phone number? Name of employer? Name of bank? — each reduced the number of responses by 20 percent, but they didn’t stop the bad debts.

Eventually, as many as 65 percent of our new members never paid their first bill. They kept the records offered for enrollment and any additional records they received, but they never paid. We learned that records appeal to the very young, the unemployed, the disadvantaged, and those who simply like to get something for nothing.

Soon the situation had become critical. Our acquisition “levers” were still working, but the more new members we enrolled, the more money the club lost. During the late 1960s, bad debts became almost the only subject we thought about or discussed. For the first time, the club, which had grown every year, began to cut back on its advertising and shrink its membership.

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Lester Wunderman 285 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10017 by Lester Wunderman. Grateful acknowledgement is made to Harcourt Brace & Company and Faber and Faber Limited for permission to reprint four lines from “Little Gidding.” In Four Quartets, by T.S.

Eliot. Copyright © 1943 by T.S. Eliot. Copyright renewed © 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Rights throughout the world, excluding the United States, are controlled by Faber and Faber Limited. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company and Faber and Faber Limited. ISBN 1-931361-43-6 Printing Number: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 E-BOOK EDITION 2010 Second edition published 2004 First edition published 1996 Cover/Book design by Helene Beth Abrams Edited by Claire Coyne and Ann Zeller Production directed by Barbara Lewers To my wife, Suzanne, whose faith was stronger than my fears We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

— T.S. ELIOT, “Little Gidding” Four Quartets Special Note to My E-Book Readers• viii Special Note to My E-Book Readers I am delighted to enter the digital world and to contribute my writings to the library with the largest exposure in the world: the Internet. When I sat down almost seven years ago to write the preface to the second edition of Being Direct, I introduced my path, described the tools, listed the experiences, and highlighted the characters and situations that together provided me with the resources to create the grand design of what I named and described as Direct Marketing.

This communication typifies how far we have come since 2004. This is a unique and different process. Today, you can open pages such as these on a screen. Our new technology is ubiquitous. It functions anywhere and everywhere: on a train, subway, plane, on the beach, on the road, in bed, while shopping or waiting at a doctor’s office or just as you rest in your favorite and most comfortable chair at home.

You are able to switch between reading the pages of my book and Googling the names of the industry giants, corporate executives, and the historical advertising campaigns to which I refer.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 3460cc423f4b3721
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,716,369 bytes (1.637 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 1931361436
• Pages: 302
• Language: English (en)

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