High impact direct mail, while out of vogue in the digital era, is still on the marketing table for the right opportunities, and for the right idea. Sometimes there's no better way to get a message across than to send your audience something physical, something with stage presence, something whose physicalness just can't be matched in any online forum.
But then there's Restoration Hardware's recent direct mail piece weighing in at a reported 17 lbs: a shrink-wrapped package of 13 different "Source Books" (euphemism for catalog).
You read that right. Seventeen pounds of printed paper in one mailing. All because of a miscalculation of consumer perception.
But first, cue the heavy-weight social outrage.
My brother is a financial guy in North Carolina. He got one of these RH monstrosities and immediately called me to say, "Will, you have got to see this thing. It's about twenty books. I could hardly carry it into the house." You know what my brother did? He skipped the social media channels altogether and packaged the books up and sent them to the CEO of Restoration Hardware (cost him $32.54 - he sent me the receipt) with a note that said:
Dear Mr. Friedman -
I am sending you the enclosed on the assumption that the landfills in your neighborhood have more capacity than ours here in Chapel Hill. And, yes, I did check your web site justification for sending me a giant brick of waste and laughed out loud as I read it. Kindly refer to my Newsletter (http://hamiltonpoint.com/window-glaziers-and-letter-carriers/) for my firm's take on this subject and kindly remove my family from your mailing list.
Andrew Burns
I wonder how many more people took the time to return-to-sender. Judging from the social media outrage below, I bet it was hundreds.
I thought I was able to escape this utter marketing debacle. No thanks @RestorationHardware. Come take it back. Now. - Mark Boles
If I sit down with 3300 pages, there better be a scarfaced wizard or a lot of Jesus involved. - Marilyn Thomas
Go here to remove yourself from the @RestoHardware catalog mailing list in the future (link) - Tim O'Reilly
And here's a compilation of pictures posted across various social media. And a mildly funny YouTube video of Kai Ryssdal getting knocked out by a RH direct mail piece: "Kai Ryssdal's run-in with Restoration Hardware's 15-pound catalog."
Here is a picture taken by Rebecca Roman of the mail area at her NYC apartment:
The point is, this direct mail piece from Restoration Hardware has become a joke.
The crime here is not an environmental one.
You can tell RH was nervous about this from the start. As my brother noted (and laughed at), RH had a ready-made page on their web site called, "Our Source Book Sustainability Initiative," where they make a four-point case about how sending these gigantic catalogs out was not an environmental problem. Specifically: 1. RH only sends out catalogs once a year, 2. RH's paper is forest certified, 3. RH is the founder of the Verso Forrest Certification Grant Program, 4. RH's shipping is carbon neutral (they bought carbon offsets).
Now all of that is well and good on paper, but in marketing perception is reality. Try convincing a person, like my brother, who is holding a 3,000 page, 17 pound catalog that the catalog is not bad for the environment. Go ahead, try. In fact, unfold a projector screen on the person's front lawn, project a Powerpoint presentation with all four sustainability points from the RH web site, add graphs, facts, figures, maybe even pictures of happy polar bears, and you still will not convince anyone that the 3,000 page, 17 pound catalog they are holding is not bad for the environment.
Now, to really drive the point home tell the person that the entire catalog is also available on the RH site AND via a pretty slick iPad app. Watch the person turn their gaze to the physical monolith in their hands (which is by now getting really heavy) and then watch them scream.
Because the crime here isn't environmental. For all we know, the brand may very well have taken the appropriate steps to render the 17-pounds-of-paper-shipped-to-thousands-around-the-country carbon neutral. But it doesn't matter. The crime here is a marketing one, and I suspect is the result of a marketing team convincing itself that their customers are rational people who make rational decisions. There is plenty of evidence that purchase decisions are anything but rational (see Dan Ariely's book, "Predictably Irrational").
I don't care how well your company's stock price is doing, when it comes to something as emotionally charged as the environment Restoration Hardware should have known better.
Thud.
How will RH respond?
Honestly, I could see a company sending a giant set of books like this to a select group of high-end designers or other tradesmen who will keep the books as useful reference. But not consumers. Unfortunately for RH, this year the damage is done. To me, RH has an opportunity to respond next year and "make good" with its audience.
Here's one way. Send another physical mailer in 2015, only this time it's a postcard that acknowledges the 17-pound mistake of 2014. The postcard invites people to download the Source Book app this year, and then requests that people not throw the postcard away but plant it.
Because this postcard is made of seed paper, laced with flower seeds, where you can actually plant the paper itself in the ground (e.g. Bloomin). A statement like that will go a long way towards restoring Restoration Hardware from this marketing-perception miscue.
