About this piece

We are delighted to present the third of a series of articles written by distinguished branding expert Martin Lindstrom. Martin has a worldwide reputation and is considered to be one of branding’s most original thinkers.

Read more

You can buy Martin Lindstrom titles at our bookshop.

Love letters? You bet!
by Martin Lindstrom

By the age of 30, Martin Lindstrom had been an advertising executive at the global giant BBDO, had formed BBDO Interactive Europe and founded BBDO Interactive Asia. Both grew to become the largest Internet solutions companies in their regions.

Still in his early thirties, Martin Lindstrom is considered by the Chartered Institute of Marketing to be one of the world’s most respected branding gurus. He sits on boards around the world and his blue-chip client list includes GlaxoSmithKline, Pepsi, American Express, Mercedes-Benz, Reuters, Visa, Yellow Pages, McDonald's and Kellogg's.

Lindstrom's unique vision is supported by global studies and his last four books, written with industry icons Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, Patricia Seybold and Philip Kotler, are sold worldwide and have been translated into more than 20 languages. His most recent, highly acclaimed book, BRANDsense, is published by Simon & Schuster New York. Visit MartinLindstrom.com to learn more..

When did you last receive a letter? You know, one of those flat pieces of paper folded into what you call an ‘envelope’ and accompanied by something called a ‘stamp’ that signifies payment for the letter’s transportation to its destination. When did you last get a letter written to you personally? Or even better, a letter written especially to you by hand? Apart from Christmas greetings, I can’t recall the last time I found a real letter waiting at home for me. But whenever it was, the letter’s arrival would have been the event of the day.

Ironically, the technology we’ve been nurturing to enable ever faster communication, ever more effective and ever cheaper, is receiving a backlash from its earlier forms. Not long ago, email was hailed as the discovery of the century. Any organization with a modicum of interest in innovation jumped on the email bandwagon and began offering cheap, instant communication.

And we’ve all been swept along, busily transferring the conventions of traditional letter-writing to email-composition. And while the maelstrom of emailing rages around us, and the onslaught of cleverer and cleverer emails that bypass security systems and claim to be clean of viruses clouds our vision, our own whirlwinds of expensive attempts to engage in unique communication styles blind us to the fact that we’re all doing exactly the same thing.

So, STOP! Consider this fact: email may no longer be IT. While everyone is competing for consumer attention by direct email, we’re missing the salient fact that this technique may no longer be working. I’m willing to bet that a campaign aimed at getting people to buy something would be more effectively conducted offline. In the long run, I believe you’d be better off actually posting a letter, spending the money on making your communication tactile, perhaps even including a real signature or, even better, writing the letter by hand. In the end, your message would be delivered with 1000 times more potency and the cost would turn out to be only fractionally higher than an emailed version.

But this is far from the whole story. Aside from selling products, this tactile approach would build your brand too. Why? Simply because recipients would remember the letter, whereas they’re unlikely to remember one email out of who-knows-how-many in a day. Just test this notion yourself: name the last five commercial emails you received. Can you remember any of them at all?

‘Okay, Martin’, you might remonstrate. ‘Are you saying I should dispense with email entirely?’ Of course not. But we should think about combining channels more. We should think about being less focused on the short-term attraction of cost savings made possible by being able to send millions of emails free of charge. We should think about the fact that, even though we can send millions of emails free of charge, hardly any of them will be opened. There are just too many of them. And they arrive with the perceived risk of carrying a virus. Direct emails are more likely to be deleted in fear than greeted with a cheer.

The direct marketing of the future will combine email and letters, with greater weight being lent to the letter part of the equation. Until electronic mailing reaches some new dimension, in which the threat of virus transmission and odious scams are things of the past, direct emailing will be of limited benefit if used exclusively. Needless to say, this will take time, and some might even claim that such ‘remediation’ will never happen. But, instead of waiting for this scenario to unfold, reconsider your email strategy, combine it with the good old offline world and start posting out those old-fashioned things with stamps on them. The transmission might be slower, but I’m sure your message will be received more quickly and will leave a memorable brand impression.

© Martin Lindstrom, 2008

LINDSTROM company profile

Martin Lindstrom and his global team advise some of the world’s top brands on all aspects of brand building and brand optimization. Martin has led, and continues to lead, pioneering research on branding and our relationships with brands. The company’s research benefits from the collaborative effort of academics, physiologists and scientists, united in the purpose of developing innovative ways to build and maintain brands of the future. The insights gained from comprehensive brand R&D programmes inform LINDSTROM company’s world-leading approaches to building brand identities and nurturing lasting relationships with consumers.

Martin Lindstrom’s bestselling books BRANDchild and BRANDsense are ranked among the top-twenty best-selling business books. They contain the learning gained from multimillion dollar global research programmes and question established marketing orthodoxies. Martin’s consultation work, speaking schedule, and LINDSTROM company’s ongoing development work with big and small brands all over the world combine with Lindstrom publishing aims to redefine brand-building to achieve ever more powerful brands and the best return on marketing investment.

Return to resources page