Bank right on the money with scarily precise sales pitch JULIE SZEGO
The Age
Thursday February 18, 2010
Appeals to motherhood and breast cancer were pure marketing genius. AFEW weeks back I took advantage of a rare lull on the home front to sort through a pile of mail. I picked up a letter in an ANZ envelope. I suspect the same kind of letter could have come from any of the big banks. Expecting another irritating product promotion or an even more irritating courtesy letter setting out yet another rise in charges, I tore open the envelope ready to toss its contents, unfolded, into the rubbish.And then I glimpsed a pink ribbon, the widely recognised symbol of support for breast cancer victims, in the top left-hand corner of the page and the word "motherhood" at the end of a sentence in larger type.The bank's marketing gurus deserve full credit here because the ribbon and the word were enough to make me stop en route to the bin.Breast cancer and motherhood €” one of these themes in isolation would probably command my attention, but lumping the two together was sheer genius. For a 40-year-old mother of two children, this was a surgical strike. They knew I was 40 because one of the attached forms mentioned it. Was the motherhood bit an educated guess, arrived at by some creative data crunching: age, income, healthy €” as in large €” mortgage? If so, that's probably the least sinister scenario."Dear Ms Szego," the letter read, "There are no manuals for motherhood." A somewhat strange paragraph followed, comprised largely of, well, motherhood statements. The word "instinct" featured in the first sentence and was repeated another three times on the page."No textbook can teach you how to have dinner on the table after a hectic day at work or muster up Vegemite sandwiches and half-time oranges when you are running late for your kid's soccer match." And then: "You know that your children's wellbeing . . . is what's important. Instinctively. And you will move heaven and earth to protect it."Only in the next paragraph, headed "What else does your instinct tell you?", do we cut to the chase. "Does that instinct also make you wonder what would happen if you were unable to care for them due to a serious illness?" Breast cancer is the most common and most deadly cancer in women, with 12,000 new cases in Australia a year, the letter read. If you're the person "taking the lead role" in your family's wellbeing, consider how the whole thing might "come crashing down" were cancer to strike.And then the entreaty: a life insurance plan for women, with an optional "Living Benefit" to keep things ticking over during cancer treatment. Alongside the pink ribbon of Breast Cancer Australia, there's another soft push on the guilt button: "We will donate $10 if you buy a policy and keep it for 30 days." The implication being that if you don't buy the policy, the cause can go to buggery.I'd love to say I immediately saw the cynical and manipulative attempt to exploit women at what's arguably their most vulnerable time, but enlightenment came only after I mentioned this letter to a colleague. In my case, the pitch was so spectacularly on the money that the letter reversed its route from the bin to the "think about it later" pile.I was, as per the portrait, a harried working mother with little time to reflect, so the appeal to "instinct" worked a treat. I instinctively kept the letter. After all, it was pretty freaky. In the dead of night, while my children slumber, my mind sometimes works overtime. My mother got breast cancer at 60 (she's still with us, thank God) but what if the disease struck me too €” and earlier €” breast cancer being so common and all?What would happen to my children? The terror that practically defines motherhood.There's nothing wrong with flogging life or sickness insurance by appealing to concern for family members. But the creepy thing here is the degree of specificity. Not just any cancer, but breast cancer with all its sexual and maternal associations. Not just any woman, but a mother. Not just any mother but a working mother €” one likely to be dosing up on guilt as it is. Not just a poke at our general fear of death but, far more potent, the fear of what might then happen to our children.By now, you've almost lost sight of the reality that while cancer is a possibility, all things being equal you probably won't get it. Sometimes a pitch can be too perfect, so perfect it falls outside the bounds of fair play. The letter has since made it to the bin.Julie Szego is a senior writer.
© 2010 The Age