TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040990/0409640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 125 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 98

The Check Is in the Mail


By Michael Kinsley


    After the 1988 election, in a rage at George Bush's conduct,
I was particularly susceptible to liberalish junk mail. What
I hungered for was a group called something like Patriotic
Americans for Flag Burning and Prison Furloughs. What I settled
for was the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union,
Handgun Control Inc. and my local public-television station.
In the past few months, they have all been hitting me up for
renewal. What's more, they have generously shared my name and
address with other groups willing to gamble that a tender
concern for the First Amendment or a fondness for British soap
operas will tend to accompany a sympathy for elephants and
dolphins or a passion to deny a raise to members of Congress.

    Now, despite my best efforts to stoke them, the fires of
rage have cooled. Was Roger Ailes the prisoner and Willie
Horton the political strategist or the other way around? And
what does it all have to do with starvation in Ethiopia,
anyway? Yet, thanks to the peculiar economics of the
direct-mail business, a heart that bleeds only sporadically and
selectively is worse than a heart that doesn't bleed at all.

    Here's why. Suppose Patriotic Americans for Flag Burning,
etc., actually exists and sends you an invitation to join up
for $25. The "package" will be full of goodies: a letter, a
reply envelope, a card (too big for the envelope, with a
pointless perforation so that half of it can be torn off and
thrown away), a brochure and perhaps a little Taiwanese-made
American flag to burn in the privacy of your home. Why all this
stuff? Because you demand it. While trying to appeal to you
with flattery for your intelligence and compassion, direct-mail
packages are designed on the assumption that you're a
self-indulgent idiot. Even environmental groups destroy
thousands of extra trees, sating their members' hunger for
superfluous paper.

    As a result, even an inexpensive package will cost 10 cents
to produce. Buying your name from Citizens for Massive Federal
Subsidies to Decadent Art (which you joined last year) might
cost Americans for Flag Burning another 6 cents, and mailing
the package at bulk rate will be about a dime. Total: 26 cents.
But if one person out of 100 responds to the package, that's
considered an adequate return. So it's cost them $26 to extract
your $25. Unless you send more, they're out a buck. Of course,
the money spent finding you is lost whether you respond or not.
But that's just the beginning. After waiting a decent interval

signed up for -- they will begin trying to renew you. (When I
did my taxes last year, I discovered I'd paid my annual
public-television dues three times.) Renewal notices don't
require buying the name (they own you already) and tend to be
thinner on party favors, but they usually are personalized,
which is expensive. They might cost 40 cents each. And it would
not be unusual to send out ten of these before writing you off
as a deserter. That's four bucks.

    Worst of all, Americans for Flag Burning will have shared
their false hopes of your generosity with other groups perhaps
30 times during a year. Not for free, of course. But the income
to the name supplier is a cost to the name buyer, so from the
general ideological perspective, it's a wash. And this might
go on for three years before the computers figure out that
you're not the soft touch they took you for. That's 90 more
letters at 20 cents each (not counting name-rental costs), or
$18. By sending in $25, you have cost groups to which you are
generally sympathetic something like $22 ($18 plus $4) -- on
top of the $26 they spent finding you in the first place.

    The same loss-leader economics applies to all direct mail
-- for magazines, delicious cheese products, whatever. In
addition to the solicitation costs, commercial operations
actually have to supply you with the product after you've
signed up (and often a calculator or telephone or small sports
car as a premium as well). These businesses, too, usually make
money only if you reorder. But knowing that the money you send
in doesn't even cover the cost of discovering your propensity
to send in money grates more in the case of fund raising for
charitable or political causes.

    Other things grate as well. At their worst, some of these
"cause" groups are totally the creations of direct-mail mills,
which invent them for the very purpose of swallowing up most
of the revenues in fund-raising costs and generating lists of
contributors to sell. Even legitimate groups distort their
agendas to emphasize "hot button" issues that will produce a
better direct-mail response.

    Direct-mail fund raising also leads groups to create or
exploit bogeymen, to personalize the issue. Ted Kennedy's dream
may have died, but it lives on in the nightmares of thousands
of conservative donors. Liberal causes have lost Ed Meese and
Robert Bork, but are trying (a bit desperately) to make do with
David Duke, the former Klansman in the Louisiana state
legislature.

    And even the most admirable groups -- dedicated to honesty
in government, high cultural standards and civic virtue in
general -- seem to think most standards of integrity are
suspended when it comes to raising money. Fake telegrams, phony
opinion surveys, duplicitous "deadlines" and so on are almost
universal in the business. The "emergency" that forces Citizens
for (or Against) Dirty Rock Lyrics to ask reluctantly for more
money, just two months after you signed up, was built into the
group's budget all along.

    What I may do, after renewing Handgun Control, is send five
bucks to the National Rifle Association and a few groups like
that. Then I'll lean back and let them spend many times that
amount trying to squeeze more out of me. On the receiving end
of the direct-mail business, torturing the opposition may be
the way to get the most bang for your buck.