A local news station just ran a story about people being freaked out by something they got in the mail. That something was a direct mail promotion from a car dealer that consisted of a fake news item with a “personalized” post-it note on it saying “Check it out” and signed J. Here’s the deal: that direct mail tactic has been around at least since the mid-90s and I know that because I actually worked on one of those campaigns for a publishing company back then. Heck, we stole the idea from a magazine publisher and I’m pretty sure every human in America received a mailer like that from one company or another around that time.

I’m not sure what irks me more about this story; the lame local take on ‘Rossen Reports’ style of TV news which is itself the dog crap on the bottom of the journalism shoe, or the fact that I’m getting long enough in the tooth that I can remember marketing tactics that are so old that the whippersnappers think it’s something new.

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