Open Me Now

Still need convincing that the old saying "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression" is still true? The evidence is as near as your mailbox. Every year, more than half a billion pieces of perfectly good direct mail pieces are tossed into the wastebasket without ever getting opened. Why? Because whoever designed their envelopes didn't know how to get them to say "Open Me Now!"

Herschell Gordon Lewis is former chairman of Communicomp, a full-service direct marketing agency absorbed into Interpublic. He now heads Lewis Enterprises, through which he writes and consults individually for clients in the U.S. and a number of other countries. He is arguably the best-known direct response writer and consultant in the United States. For 200 consecutive issues Mr. Lewis wrote the monthly feature ""Creative Strategies"" for Direct Marketing Magazine, He currently writes ""Curmudgeon-at-Large"" for Direct, ""E-Marketing"" for Internet Retailer, ""Burnt Offerings"" for The NonProfit Times, and is the copy columnist for Multichannel Merchant (formerly Catalog Age). He also writes ""Copy Class"" for the UK publication Direct Marketing International, and catalog critiques for the UK publication Catalogue & eBusiness. For years Mr. Lewis conducted the copy workshop at the International Direct Marketing Symposium, Montreux, Switzerland, and he has appeared frequently at the Pan-Pacific Symposium in Sydney, Australia. He also has addressed national Direct Marketing Associations in countries such as England, France, the U.K., Spain, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil, Singapore, and South Africa ... and has been engaged to present copywriting seminars in many countries, including Austria, Mexico, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Dubai. He is frequently called on to speak at meetings of the Direct Marketing Association, in the United States.