Reader's Digest Is Better Off Not Sending Junk Mail

The cover letter. Reads stupid, isn't it?

Every now and then, Reader's Digest, to which I am a long time subscriber, comes up with some bright ideas. Sometimes, not too bright ones.

And when they do, you really wonder if you should just terminate the subscription for making you feel so stupid to have subscribed to a magazine that apparently don't give two hoots about your intelligence and continues to insult it with vehemence with junk mails promising you would be an instant millionaire if you act now on its offer.

This recently happened to me, again and again, with the company promising that my name had been entered for some stupid lottery-like thingy that promised instant riches. Reading between the fine lines, it actually wanted me to purchase some silly reading material and the junk mail set up was so good that had I acted on it, I would have realised that I had been had. Of course, to get to the fine line, I would have to sift through some deliciously crafted literature that was design to floor the greedy in two blows.

It set me thinking, why should such an organisation resort to such junk mail and if they realised that I would gladly terminate my subscription given half the chance of additional irritation, and encourage 20 of my friends to do the same?

It must be a marketing manager's idea, of course. But what the heck? You know how many trees you have to down to make that much of paper to print your junk on? These junk mails are nothing by an attempt to hoodwink the gullible and the greedy.

Wouldn't it be better for public relations and good will to ask, periodically, in a marketing survey, if such junk mail was welcomed? And perhaps, how many of such junk mail had actually resulted in a sale and if the cost was actually worth braving bad publicity for?

And if not, perhaps junk the person or department that came up with the silly idea of flooding one's client's mailbox with unsolicited literature that could one day prompt him/her to actually cancel his/her subscription?


The junk mail. How many trees have been cut to produce these? What about the environment as a result of discarding these garbage?