My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 1, #29, March, 1996

TARGET MARKET

I may have mentioned that I am a magazine junkie. As a result, I am as fine a case study of the art of targeted marketing by direct mail as you are ever likely to meet. (My mailman wishes I was a somewhat less sterling example.) I can look at the contents of my mailbox any day and tell you exactly who sold which marketers my name.

There is a significant number of marketers out there who believe me to be black. (I'm white, although after my first summer week of intensive gardening, my skin is substantially darker than that of official blacks like Mariah Carey and Vanessa Williams. I do find race to be a fairly bizarre sort of social construct.)

They think I'm black because I subscribe to Emerge: Black America's News Magazine, and to American Visions, a gorgeous magazine of African-American art, literature, and culture. And they regularly invite me to buy hair straighteners, make-up tailored for black women, and rap music (shudder), and to support black causes.

I used to subscribe to the Sporting News, Baseball Digest, and Basketball Digest, and I actually have ordered sports books and Detroit Pistons T-shirts by mail order (in Iowa, the Detroit Pistons are NOT well thought of, nor is their merchandise stocked). Consequently I get all kinds of flyers for sports books and apparel, and come-ons for videos full of exciting basketball action (swish!) and football action (CRUNCH!!--don't ever let anyone tell you that violence is incidental to the popularity of football).

I am a long-time subscriber to Technology Review, and lately have added Wired and NetGuide to my repertoire. This means that I have been added to the A-List of dweebs. Bill Gates, America Online, computer manufacturers, are now beating a path to my mailbox, apparently convinced that I love and understand computers.

On the other hand, this does also get me the Edmund Scientific Co. catalog. As one who used to get dolls for Christmas while my brother got the neat stuff--erector sets, electric trains, all kinds of stuff that moved and went beep--the Edmund catalog reminds me why I'd like to be six again. (And a boy.)

Then I get political stuff. I subscribe to Washington Monthly, and to Liberal Opinion Week because I like to be reminded that there are still some real live liberals out there somewhere. (I assume that when Newt Gingrich called Bill Clinton "the most liberal president of the twentieth century," you in England who know what actual liberals look like, guffawed. Loudly.)

I also contribute to liberal causes. This means that I am on the official Bleeding Hearts list. I am regularly invited to save:

• the coral reefs;
• the whales;
• the virgin forests of the northwest;
• the Democratic Party (talk about your endangered species);
• the ozone;
• girl babies in India;
• unjustly condemned residents on death row,
• and more, much more.

Greenpeace, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the AIDS coalition--they all want me. I guess it's nice to be loved, even if I do figure probably entire forests have gone into asking me to help save our natural resources.

I'm on a lot of journalism mailing lists, too, because I subscribe to Extra!, to American Journalism Review, and to Media Studies Journal. This must be why I'm on the American Civil Liberties Union's hot list. And it's true, I am a passionate defender of the first amendment. It's just that when the ACLU went to court to defend the right of the bleacher bums in Tiger Stadium to yell obscenities at each other, despite a request from management that they take due note of the fact that children were present, I kind of gave up on those guys. I like my zealots with a little more common sense and a LOT more sense of humor.

And then there's all the music and video stuff I get because I subscribe to Rolling Stone, and all the alternative life style stuff I get because I subscribe to Utne Reader. These poor dears think I'm young and hip and upscale! (Of course, at my age, it's nice to know that someone is weaving a vivid fantasy life around me.)

Which brings us to the American Association of Retired Persons. They have an unerring nose for sniffing out anyone about to turn 50, so they've been after me for a while. When they sent me my membership card, I tore it into shreds and sent it back to them with a polite note explaining that I thought their agenda and tactics were despicable and I wanted no part of them. They sent me another membership card. I sent a somewhat stronger note, in which words like "pond scum" were prominent. They sent me another card. And then I explained to them that, while in general I feel that a blameless life is one lived without lawyers in it, I would sue the pants off them if they ever used my name to suggest support for their agenda. (I think I'm now off their list.)

I subscribe to American Studies and to Etc: a Review of General Semantics. I'll probably be on a few more mailing lists, the very moment they figure out what it is they can sell to semanticists and students of popular culture.

Oh, I forgot. I'm also a librarian, which means all kinds of people think I might want to order books and magazines. Not, on the whole, a bad guess.

I am what direct marketing is all about. They are in the business of buying select bits and pieces of you. Maybe because I come in so many oddly assorted little chunks, I am more conscious of this than most. But this is a game you too can play. Try it sometime; look at your mail and see if you can figure out who sold your mailbox. You might be surprised.

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