The Pitch: Wooing minds not our money

By JOHN BISHOP

WE all get stuff in our letterboxes, right? Not just letters and bills, but other stuff that we may or may not want.

It's promotional material: offering anything from the house next door, or a kitten to a good home, to advertising the local stores, or soliciting work for a handyman.

Farmers, The Warehouse, Briscoes, Placemakers, Harvey Norman, New World, Woolworths, Foodtown, Countdown and Pak'n Save and others regularly fill my mailbox (and then my rubbish bin.)

But there's a new type of publication turning up in mailboxes and its message is rather different from the usual "buy this now".

A pure product message is the simplest form of marketing communication and that has been flooding our letterboxes in various forms over recent years.

The informational brochure was a subtle refinement. These were product messages wrapped in an interesting editorial message and presented in a magazine or newsletter format.

Healthcare companies and pharmacy chains pioneered this softer approach. The advertorial messages were complemented by lengthy advice commercials on TV fronted by credible, but pleasant, authority figures like Jude Dobson.

The publications were not glossy flyers or cheap newsprint broadsheets, but stapled magazines with researched articles about illnesses from acne to influenza, and addressing issues from children's health to ageing.

Now there's a further evolution: I call them organisational media. These publications come through the mailbox but they are not about selling a product or service.

Local authorities, and water and power suppliers have been publishing organisational media in various parts of the country.

I got two such publications delivered to my home recently; one from the regional council, the other from the city council - the latter with 16 pages in full colour, 30 positive stories and 40 pictures.

Organisational media are free. They are targeted only in the sense that everyone in the target audience (all households in this case) gets a copy. The message, tone and content are fully controlled by the sender.

The communication is intended to develop a positive image of the organisation rather than to sell anything, so there's no call to action.

The communication is based on the organisation's desire to communicate with you, not on your expressed need to know.

Manipulative? Probably. And it's usually done with your money.

If challenged, the organisation will say that surveys showed the public wanted more communication, so that's what it is providing.

While we may object to the volume of material in our letterboxes, at least we can discard what we don't want to read, and choose the products we buy.

The organisational information now turning up works on a rather different basis and its influence is, therefore, harder to recognise and manage. It's our minds not our money they are after.

* John Bishop is a journalist and commentator on media and marketing matters.

* The Pitch is a forum for those working in advertising, marketing, public relations and communications. We welcome lively and topical 500-word contributions.


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