New ads in mail tailored to impress
By Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Coming soon to your mailbox: advertising shaped like a sports car or a stop sign, a hula doll or a hamburger — almost anything an artist can conceive.
Customized MarketMail begins Monday, offering advertisers the chance to think outside the envelope and send material that shows their products dramatically.
The first mailing, to Southern California, will be simulated boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Other designer ads are in the works.
There's a card showing a new motorcycle, cut into the shape of a powerful two-wheeler. Or an oval hamburger, with lettuce and onions sticking out from the side. A bunch of grapes. A sad-eyed bulldog puppy.
Other coming ads are for a Japanese automaker and a cell-phone company, postal officials said.
It's a battle for attention, said Nick Barranca, postal vice president for new products. Customized MarketMail will allow businesses to make products stand out.
It's not cheap or simple, but leaders of the direct-mail industry welcome it.
H. Robert Wientzen, head of the Direct Marketing Association calls it an "exciting new development" and says: "There's no doubt that CMM is the shape of things to come."
Tom Becker, president of ShipShapes in Park Forest, Ill., one of the companies designing the new ads, praises the idea as an innovative way to reach customers.
With new restrictions in the works for telemarketing and spam advertising, companies are looking for better ways to deliver their messages, Becker said.
The final decision on whether it works, of course, is in the hands of the public.
To help gauge acceptance, at least some of the ads will be coupons.
For example, the simulated box of doughnuts in the first ad, targeting Orange County, Calif., offers recipients a dozen doughnuts for a dime when they buy a dozen and bring in the ad.
If customers bring in lots of the coupons, the advertisers will know it was worth the effort and money.
They'll be paying a premium to send the ads.
Current advertising mail rates vary according to size and weight of the envelope, but often are lower than the 37-cent first-class rate because businesses get discounts to presort much of the mail and deliver it to bulk-mail centers or local post offices.
The new customized pieces will cost 57.4 cents each to mail — 46 cents for nonprofit organizations — with a minimum of 200 pieces. Pieces must be no bigger than 12 by 15 inches, weighing no more than 3.3 ounces.
And since these items can't be handled by postal sorting machinery, the sender must drop them off at the local post offices where carriers will take them for delivery. Another option is to put them in large envelopes dropped of at a bulk-mail center that will forward them to local offices to be opened and delivered.
While the post office wants to encourage creativity, it does have limits on what can be mailed — for example, nothing "obscene, lewd, filthy, lascivious, vile, indecent."
The ads are not approved before they're available for delivery, said marketing specialist Christopher Ashe. If a recipient or postal worker complains, an item can be ruled nonmailable and the company can even be fined.
