Rattle Those Pots and Pans

In addition to my becoming an independent consultant to the Canadian women’s movement in 1990[1], I decided in that year to boycott men’s fiction. When one makes the political personal, all kinds of sacrifice must be borne.  I made do.  As long as the Male Writer stuck to non-fiction, I remained a Gentle Reader.  But when they assumed a women’s voice my cold heart turned to stone. Sure I missed out on John Updike’s Rabbit series and Roth’s Zuckerman books.  Taking solace in Mary Stewart’s The Wicked Day, Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, I retained my equilibrium.  Like giving up chewing gum for Lent, it wasn’t a big sacrifice.  

The women’s movement was the crucible for social change in 1990 (in more than just fiction).  The case against Henry Morgentaler had been struck down by the Supreme Court in 1988.  In 1989, the Court ruled that a woman’s male partner didn’t have equal say in whether a woman could have an abortion.  Yet, funding for women’s shelters was practically non-existent, daycare was a crap shoot and the rape shield law which prevented women from being cross-examined on their sexual history during a rape trial was still two years away. 

I was sitting in a café with Sue Birge, then a National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) staff person, going over the concept for a fundraising mailing.  The envelope was bright red and the tagline declared  “I’m so angry I could scream . . .!”  The women at the next table leaned over to say, ‘you got that right.’  Response to the mailing was heroic and we raised lots of money.  That’s how it was then.  Women were really ticked off about a lot of things and they wanted to do something about it. 

NAC received about $1 million a year from the Secretary of State Women’s Program, but we knew it was coming to an end.  Ensuring 5,000 angry women would show up on Parliament Hill once a year to take aim at Tory, and later, Reform policies didn’t seem to be worth the agro factor for the Liberals anymore (although it was fun to see Preston Manning go apoplectic once a year at the very thought of the federal government funding a women’s organization that did nothing but complain). 

I was right where I wanted to be, in the middle of the action, working as a consultant with NAC.  Judy Rebick had just become president.  She had already become a bit of a household name – having saved Dr. Morgentaler from an anti-abortion activist wielding garden shears outside his clinic on

Harbord Street

. 

Judy was smart, funny and politically savvy.  NAC could be very successful with her at the helm I thought.  The time was right for a strong woman leader.

 “I suppose you’ve got all kinds of people advising you on your communications. ” I said to her at dinner one night, deciding to press my case.

“No.  I don’t,” replied Judy.

“Really?” 

Next:  The Genius of Manhattan

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[1] In 1990, The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum was the sixth bestselling book of fiction, Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw was number six in non-fiction, Mariah Carey won the Grammy for Best New Artist, Time magazine named George H.W. Bush Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year).   Nelson Mandela was released from prison.  The Oka Crisis consumed us during the late summer and fall.

The Men Behind the Revolution

If it is true, as it is so often and tiresomely repeated that “behind every good man is a good woman” and assuming the reverse is also true, then I, as a good woman, confess to having had not one, but four, good men behind me – my own secret John, Paul, George and Ringo.  That I didn’t know them all personally is beside the point.  As a mercenary for good, one must get past such nuance.  

Looking back, I can’t tell you which man I met first, but my memory lands on Jerry Huntsinger.  He wrote his letters so personally, I felt like I had known him all my life.  He told me he had Tourette’s Syndrome and that’s why he started writing letters. By receiving a letter, people would get an impression of him before they met him, he said, and therefore might take the chance to get to know him.  Jerry could be as funny as hell.  One story I used to tell about him was that he wanted to write a book and so sent off a letter to a publisher outlining the contents.  “Yes, yes, we’re very interested,” replied the publisher. But when Jerry sent in a draft manuscript, the publisher refused to believe the same person wrote the book as wrote the letter, the book being so awful.  Valerie March, who then worked for Family Services Association, loved this story and asked me to tell it when we were at parties together. 

Jerry was more like Casanova than Gloria Steinam in the way he got the whole women and direct mail thing.  He trumpeted the fact that direct mail donors were women and argued with fundraising executives and Board members about copy that would appeal to them.  And in 1989, he insisted on a quite radical idea for the time: “When I am referring to the people who receive fundraising letters,” he wrote, “I will use ‘her’ and ‘woman’ . . .  I will use ‘man’ or ‘male’ only when specifically referring to a man.”  He wrote that under the chapter heading Learn to Love a Woman.

Mal Warwick was the second of my Fab Four. I pumped my fist in a silent salute when I received my copy of Revolution in the Mailbox.  Mal had just finished work on Jesse Jackson’s 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, raising about $6 million through DM.  His book was full of great mailing samples and I read for the first time what was to become mantra to a generation of fundraisers:  Renewal 1.  Renewal 2.  Renewal 3 . . . all the way to “most recalcitrant donor”; a phrased I loved as soon as I read it, adopted it as my own and have been using it ever since. 

Mal also had a newsletter at the time called Successful Direct Mail.  In every issue, he’d feature a special mailing picked from packages readers sent in.  I sent an acquisition mailing, an inexpensive roll, fold, slit that I had developed for the St. Stephen’s Community House Corner Drop-In Program.  It cost next to nothing to produce and had been quite successful.  Perhaps it would be featured in the newsletter!  Sad to say it wasn’t, but I received a lovely letter from Mal, saying it was a great piece, but that he wasn’t sure of the angle. 

Con Squires was another one of the great DM guys in my posse. I read every issue of Copy Clinic and critiqued every letter I wrote according to his Copy Rater Chart™.  My friend, Harvey McKinnon actually knew Con Squires and hired him to write copy occasionally.  Sensing an in, I asked Harvey to make the introduction.  He did and the next time I was in Boston I met Con Squires for lunch. He gave me great advice about an acquisition mailing for FoodShare, a control package they’ve been using ever since.  (I paid for lunch.)

But casting a shadow over everyone was a man I knew I would never meet.  He had retired to the south of France by the time I even knew what direct mail was.  But everyone knew who he was.  We all read and re-read the chapter on direct mail in a book he wrote in 1985.

David Ogilvy was best known as a Madison Avenue kind of ad guy, but he always advocated for what many ad guys turned their nose up at: direct marketing. 

And in his book Ogilvy on Advertising, he wrote, "direct response was my first love and later became my secret weapon.”

"Nobody should be allowed to create advertising for press or broadcast until he has served his apprenticeship in direct response. The experience will keep his feet on the ground for the rest of his life."

Jerry. Mal. Con. David.   And me. 

NEXT:  Rattle those pots and pans

Staging the Revolution

When I became a consultant on April 1, 1990, I believed I was on the right side of history.  I had worked at Interval House, the “oldest shelter for assaulted women in North America” for eight years, talked to and comforted hundreds of women and children fleeing unspeakable violence from belligerent jackasses who called themselves husbands and fathers.  I appeared on national TV as a shelter spokesperson to talk about the massacre at École Polytechnique and sat stunned and incredulous as Barbara Frum questioned whether it really had anything to do with the students being women.  On a more cheerful note, I did sit next to Blue Jays’ first baseman Willie Upshaw at least three times for lunch.  (His wife, Cindy, was an Interval House supporter and he was sweet and generous.) 

By striking out on my own and becoming a consultant, I believed I was a mercenary for good.  It wasn’t a career, as my life insurance guy said at the time, it was a calling.  I fancied myself a ranger, a free agent, a strategist and a fixer.   Instead of making one woman’s life easier, I was going for the whole megillah – equality for all women.

I would not be satisfied until the women’s movement in Canada became a well-resourced army of sunny avengers ensuring women didn’t get beaten, raped and paid two thirds the salary of men for the same job. Like a London cabbie, I had the knowledge.  I could see the path.  I knew the way to get there.  And I had the weapon, the secret weapon:  direct mail.  

While I was at the shelter, I watched money raised from direct mail put a roof over the heads of women and children with nowhere else to go, design pioneering programming for children who’d witnessed violence in the home and help women who felt invisible when they came to the shelter take pride themselves once more.  And, in a particularly satisfying smart-ass moment, it allowed us to say “no thanks” to the provincial government when they finally developed a funding formula for women’s shelters but insisted we populate the shelter with people who held graduate degrees in social work.    

And the kicker, the absolutely unbelievable score was that women owned direct mail. It’s how they gave money.  It was their turf.  No drama.  No big awards.  No galas.  Just a cup of tea, a cheque book and a BRE.  Writing DM letters was like being in a secret sisterhood.  

Back then I wrote: 

“As more women’s groups are becoming involved in fundraising, more women are becoming donors of organizations that deal specifically with women’s concerns:  shelters, political actions groups and so on.  A recent study done by Craver, Mathews, Smith states that the current [U.S.] social action population is comprised of about 10 – 12 million people who have given more than $250 million each year in small gifts to a multitude of social action organizations.  Three out of five people in this group are women . . . two in five of these women give to six social action groups or more.  Two thirds give more money than they did five years ago and half intend to give more in the future.”

We had the stealth of a silent army out there.  And these women weren’t giving to charity, they were giving to change. 

Then on April 11, 1990, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the founder of MS magazine, said in the New York Times magazine,

“By deciding what causes she cares about, and then by supporting them enthusiastically, every woman can further her moral and ethical world view . . . giving money is itself a rejection of the feminine stereotype.  It involves risk taking, decision making and putting our money where our values are.  For me, the badge of feminist courage is visionary philanthropy.” 

The revolution was on. 

Next:  The Men Behind the Revolution