Effective? We’ll see.
Deceptive? Definitely.
Bias disclosure: I am no Ted Cruz fan. I think he’s a self-righteous wackadoodle with the morals of a feral rat and not quite the intellect of an eggplant. Ted Cruz’s recent fundraising direct mail has garnered a good deal of criticism. Rightly so. It masquerades as a county summons. |
Indeed, there’s reason to suspect that many a recipient will not see the return address at all, so commanding is the all-caps, scary-looking headline across the envelope center, “SUMMONS ENCLOSED – OPEN IMMEDIATELY.”
One could argue that the envelope is good direct mail in that the envelope has one job and one job only: to get itself opened. One could argue that the package is good direct mail if it performs well as a fundraiser, which remains to be seen.
No matter. It is deceptive. A dirty trick. I call that bad direct mail. My shop would have refused to create and mail it. But then, we would have declined Ted Cruz in the first place.