REPRINTED with Permission FROM

ADWEEK’S MARKETING WEEK                                                                March 27, 1989

PUBLIC SERVICE

A Marketer’s Plea From the Heart

North American‘s Greg Gates turned his company on a dime

to raise $90,000 for burn victim Veronica Zeth

By David Kiley

IT was the kind of heart-wrenching story that local dailies usually play big for a day or two, then quickly drop after the next tragedy occurs. But Greg L. Gates, executive vice president of North American Communications in Duncansville, Pa., a direct mail company with a roster of blue chip national accounts, couldn’t get the plight of Veronica Zeth out of his mind.

On a Sunday afternoon last October, 16-month-old Veronica was severely burned after propane tank exploded, ig­niting her parents’ home in Allegheny Township, Pa. Veronica received second and third degree burns over 90% of her body and, over the next few months, she would be the center of a gripping medical drama as doctors at Pittsburgh’s West Penn Hospital battled to save her life using experimental skin graft surgery.

By the beginning of December, local fund-raising drives had raised almost $15,000. By then, however, Veronica’s hospi­tal bills had already mounted to over $50,000.

Greg Gates, 39, initially responded to the lo­cal do-it-yourself drives like thousands of oth­er central Pennsylvania residents. He and his wife Patti sent in a small check. But the Veron­ica case continued to gnaw at his conscience at night, probably because it struck so close to home. Earlier, Gates and his wife had lost a child to a miscarriage, and they were expect­ing another child just after Christmas. From a previous marriage, Gates also has two sons, ages 7 and 9, and he was often distracted by thoughts about how he would feel if they were hurt or burned.

concept to postage in just seven days.

Working frantically during evenings and weekends to meet a self-imposed deadline of early December, Gates knew he faced several obstacles. His package would somehow have to cut through the clutter of holiday mail, as other national mailers filled the mailboxes with pieces for department stores and tax-deductible charities. But Gates felt he had no other choice. The local newspapers and radio stations were doing their best to keep the Ve­ronica story alive, but public interest wouldn’t last forever. “Stories like Veronica’s are very perishable,” says Gates.

But not at North American. After Gates de­scribed his plans, the company’s 600 employ­ees pitched in, “adopting” Veronica as a kind

of Christmas season crusade. “Everyone was talking about her no matter whose office I went into that week,” says Gates.

Still, Gates was worried. Rarely had he pre­pared a campaign this quickly, and the risks were high. “I thought we would be successful if we raised $1 more than North American said it would have donated anyway—somewhere in the vicinity of $15,000.”

With so little time between conception and mailing, Gates dispensed with a lengthy list search and currency checks. He simply bought the basic lists from Donnelley Marketing and moved quickly to prepare and print a mail piece.

The piece Gates created had an unpretentious, almost handmade look, but that proved to be its greatest asset. Folksy and deeply personal,

The mailing was folksy, almost handmade but it worked. The response rate was nearly 9%.

This response rate is about three times the norm for fund raising mailings, and other mailers who have heard of the Help Veronica campaign are interested in seeing if some part of Gates’ approach could be applied to large scale fund raising. Could, for example, the In­ternational Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect use the timing of the Lisa Steinberg murder case and news-clips from the trial for a direct mailing to raise funds in the New York metropolitan market?

Keith Jespersen, President of Russ Reid Co. in Pasadena, Calif., which produced a national direct mail for the child abuse group, doesn’t think so. Jespersen noted that North Ameri­can’s response rate was indeed exceptional, but that its average gift size of $10 is about half of what large organizations set as a minimum.

“What they did for the little girl is terrific, but the low average gift indicates to me that many of the donors may not be regular gift givers,” says Jespersen. “Building a list of re­peat gift givers is essential to cost effective direct mail fund raising over the long term.

Gates, for his part, ascribes the success of the campaign to the generosity and down-home values of central Pennsylvania. “This is the kind of area where people stop in at night and come up to your house to tell you the dome light is on in your car. That kind of thing doesn’t happen everywhere.”

the cover letter engaged both North American and Gates himself as major players in the Veronica drama.

“Normally, North American Communications processes large mailings for corporations like American Express, Citicorp and Montgomery Ward,” the piece began. “(But) we are also a company made up of lost of fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers . . . who felt deeply about (the Veronica

case.)” After explaining the Veronica case, Gates went on to describe his own family’s feelings. He signed the letter himself, under the line “God bless you for your help.”

To hold the attention of readers, the mailing included newspaper clips that chronicled Veronica’s story. Because North American Communications was not well known to consumers, Gates enlisted Pittsburgh’s Mellon Bank to

be the addressee on the donor envelope.

The mailing included a return address envelope and a coupon with check-off boxes for donations ranging from $5 to $890. Beside the check-off boxes on the coupon, Gates included another touch—exactly what

each contribution would buy. A $350 contribution, the coupon read, would buy “one square inch of skin grafting”; an $890 contribution would buy one day in the hospital burn center.

North American is generally happy with a 2% response rate for its commercial accounts, and the response to the mailing astounded Gates. Nearly 7% of recipients responded, returning over $90,000 in donations.