Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

In 1988 we mounted a direct mail campaign with
an ambitious young direct mail expert named Karl Rove,
who liked Churchill and was introduced to us by fellow
Texan David Sampson, later Assistant Secretary of
Commerce. We devised a superb mailing package
offering low-cost introductory subscriptions, with fly-out
testimonials by William Manchester and Senator Bob
Packwood. It was a model—an award winner.
But even with Rove’s help, we could pinpoint no
mailing list (and we sampled scores from veterans to
history clubs and periodicals) containing enough people
to provide the necessary 0.5 percent response that is
what you need for a direct mail roll-out. Churchillians
are everywhere—but nowhere in particular.
I dismiss no effort to increase members among any
demographic. But let me offer an unorthodox and revolutionary
thought for your consideration: The era of
subscription-for-service is nearly over.
I asked my son, a software engineer with many
outside interests from tropical fish to photography, how
many non-professional organizations he pays dues to
belong to: “None. Why It’s all on the web now, Dad.”
Now, I have not taken a survey of people in each
decade of life to see how many share his view. I simply
find his response interesting—given what we do.
Fifteen years ago we made a decision. We said to
each other that the time was fast approaching when large
numbers of people might not wish to pay fees to belong
to an organization devoted to a personality who died in
1965. Those who still remembered him were passing on,
and new generations of young people were growing up
in their place.
And so, we said to each other in 1995, “let’s build
an endowment of $10 or $15 million that will spin off
the earnings to support our basic mission long after
we’re gone.” In 1995, Churchillians capable of raising
that kind of money were reaching their peak earning
years, or just retiring. Now, we told each other, is the
time to enlist their support to build that endowment.
Our plan was controversial and created huge disagreements
on a personal level among our leadership.
We struggled through, and raised some money, but in
the end far below our goal. Many who contributed to
that endowment have since passed on. I think however
that there was nothing wrong with our premise.
Like it or not (I personally don’t like it), the digital
world, what I like to call “Googleworld,” is fast replacing
print, telephone and fax in every phase of life, from
ordering a garden sprinkler to launching a political campaign
to reading a book.
According to Julie Bosman, media columnist for
The New York Times, in the first five months of 2009,
e-books were 2.9 percent of trade book sales. In the
same period in 2010 e-books, which generally cost less
than hardbacks, grew to 8.5 percent, spurred by sales of
Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad. Even the big chains,
like Barnes and Noble, have witnessed declining profits
and store traffic.
For an example closer to home, consider Hillsdale
College’s periodic proceedings of its speeches, Imprimis.
It has 1.8 million subscribers. But there is no annual
subscription! You send an email to receive it, and you get
it forever—on the web or on paper, only a few pages per
issue. Likewise, if you ask for their email bulletins or
RSS feeds, you get them. All for free.
What pays for this A massive endowment, raised
from gifts, or gains on gifts that accumulate unspent. “It
still comes down to the problem of gifts,” says Hillsdale
President Larry Arnn. “Something in the publication has
to show people that the organization is worthy of
support, or they must pay for a subscription, or a
mixture of both.”
Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic (overleaf) recently
asked, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” He quoted Bruce
Friedman, a blogger on computers in medicine, whose
thinking, Friedman admitted, has taken on a “staccato”
quality, reflecting the way he scans short passages online:
“I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability
to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four
paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
One guess where that leaves the master scribe of
fifteen million words, Winston S. Churchill.
Granted, “scanning” and “skimming” is something
most of us have done for decades. So what’s changed
I think Carr is saying is that so much of our material
is now conveyed on a computer monitor that
scanning and skimming is now all we do.
Traditional periodicals are disappearing. Those that
are still successful, like The New Yorker, are depending
more and more on the Worldwide Web—not necessarily
charging for a subscription, but reaping the advertising
revenue their websites attract.
Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal,
recently said that their challenge is to restore the power
to charge for editorial content. The Journal is already
doing this, and he is starting a new “app” for iPad and
smartphones, for which they will charge.
Google earns its billions, not on searches and freeware
like Google Maps and Google News, but on the
advertisements that accompany and adorn them. Every
time a browser “clicks” on a Google ad link, Google gets
paid. Jokingly I sometimes refer to Google, whose motto
is “Do No Evil” (and which I use every waking hour), as
the “Evil Empire.” At least think I’m joking. >>
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