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I Sent You a Letter... Did You Reply?: True Tales of a Junk Mail Whiz

by Henry Cowen

258 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0491; ISBN 1-55369-089-3; US$24.50, C$28.95, EUR20.00, £14.00

Hundreds of true short stories - some funny, some sad, some just informative - about a career creating direct mail advertising for companies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book     This is the true story of a young man from New York who found fame and fortune in America's Midwest, working at a job (creating junk mail) that nobody else wanted. For 60 years he has advised companies and nonprofit fundraisers on how to use the mail to sell their products and services to millions of people. His name is Henry C. Cowen, and he is the whiz who has probably already touched your life, even though you may never have heard of him.     For about half of Cowen's working years, two of the nation's largest direct mail companies paid him to work exclusively for them - and gave him unlimited budgets to find and test new ideas, new ways to sell, new ways to make more money. He is responsible (like it or not) for much of the mail you have received in your lifetime.     Since 1975 he has also advised numerous other American companies, as well as more in Canada and Europe. His clients have included American Express, Time Newsweek, AARP, American Automobile Association, TV Guide, Exxon, Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, Sports Afield, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Biblical Archaeology Society, North Shore Animal League, Bantam Books, and so on and so forth.     His book will tell you all about this, and you will enjoy his many anecdotes, Even more importantly, if you own a company that advertises by mail (or work for one) - or a company that would like to try advertising by mail for the first time - this book is a must, because it tells you sure-fire ways to be successful.     However, this is not a textbook. It is easy to read. There are no formulas to learn, nothing to memorize. It is even entertaining, and will simply point you in the right directions and show you how to make mail more effective, more profitable. It will work for you even if you have a small company without much money to spend - or a large company that has not been as successful in the past as you may wish.     Henry Cowen has made many people rich, and he may make you rich, too. See for yourself. Buy or borrow a copy of I Sent You a Letter...Did You reply? You may even win one of the prizes offered in the book. Best of all, remember, it may make you rich.

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About the Author     Henry Cowen has been receiving recognition of his abilities for a long time, beginning in 1952, when the Des Moines Junior Chamber of Commerce named him "Young Man of the Year." That was the start. He says he has lost track of some later awards, but here are a few he remembers.     In 1975 the New York Direct Marketing Club gave him the "One Hundred Million Leadership Award" - only the fourth person in history ever to receive it.     In 1984 he was named "Marketer of the Year" by the New York Direct Marketing Club, and the following year he received the Silver Apple Award for "distinguished service to the direct marketing community."     In 1989 the Direct Marketing Association, a national organization, elected him to the Circulation Council Hall of Fame "in grateful appreciation of his immeasurable contributions to the periodical industry." Cowen was the first person ever named for this honor.     In 1991 he won the Irving Wunderman Award to "an individual who for a decade or more has combined the highest level of talent, imagination, curiosity and insight into a unique body of creative work."

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Excerpt

    After graduating from New York University, I sent letters to people I didn't know, but were mentioned in a trade magazine, Printer's Ink, now defunct. My letters worked. People replied, and one resulted in getting me a job - for the munificent sum of $22 a week - at Look Magazine, also now defunct. My letter was sent to Look's New York office, but was forwarded, I discovered to my surprise, to Des Moines, Iowa, where my addressee was headquartered.
    I took a train to Iowa. Most people didn't fly those days. Planes that did exist were propeller-driven. My train trip took two days, as it still would today. I finally did arrive in a snowstorm on Jan 31, 1942, and hailed a cab to the Kirkwood Hotel, as suggested by someone, who or where I don't remember.
    The next morning I found my way to 715 Locust Street, the address on letters I had received from Look. The company didn't seem to be there. The Des Moines Register &Tribune was there, but not Look, and my inquiries were met with blank stares.
    Uh-oh. Here I was almost two thousand miles from home, and couldn't find the company that hired me. Believe it or not, I still hadn't ever actually bought a copy of Look. I had never held one in my hands. I had never even seen one. Did it exist? What was I? An idiot? Oh Lord, I guess so.

Second excerpt

An old tried and true idea was to attach a penny to a letter, and say, "A penny for your thoughts" or something of that nature. Look did it and The Reader's Digest did, too. Once, the Digest was storing so many pennies that the warehouse floor caved in. We cleaned out the Midwest banks of their pennies, and were importing them from states along the eastern seaboard. The Federal Reserve approved because they wanted to get more pennies into circulation. Sticking pennies on letters by hand was slow and expensive, but a young fellow about 19 years old who worked in our stock room rigged up a contraption that could do it fast and was untouched by human hands. Twenty years later I thought it was time to retrieve the penny idea, and nobody knew how to stick them on.

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Catalogue Information

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