MP mail-out folds

By Kath Gannaway
IT WORKED with the Where the Bloody Hell Are You tourism campaign.
It’s the “What the!!!” factor that makes it almost impossible to ignore an advertising pitch.
McEwen MP Fran Bailey’s latest letter to constituents has “What the …” by the bucket load.
“This could be the last letter that you ever receive from my office! … The Hon Fran Bailey MP”.
What the!!!!
With Ms Bailey’s fate hanging on an imminent decision from the Court of Disputed Returns, it’s enticing advertising.
“Unfortunate wording – with what’s going on,” was one response to the Mail.
“I thought she was throwing in the towel; but it’s not her style,” was a local Liberal supporter’s take on it.
Get a letter in the mail from a polly and chances are a huge amount of it will end up in the bin unread.
But, Liberal, Labor, National, Green or sitting on the fence, no-one was going to bin this one without reading it.
“This will be the last letter you’ll receive from me – UNLESS you’d like to hear from me via snail mail, rather than email.”
Not a premonition of defeat, … just clever, and according to Ms Bailey, effective advertising.
In a bid to save paper and postage, and take advantage of the immediacy of email, the Bailey camp wants constituents to go on their email-ing list.
With more than 64,000 households in McEwen, if only half opted for email the savings on a single mail-out could save thousands of dollars, and who knows how many trees.
Ms Bailey said the tongue-in-cheek approach had worked with thousands of responses prompting one staff member to observe that the emails had been breeding overnight!
“Obviously we wanted people to read it,” Ms Bailey said.
“Overwhelmingly people are responding via email and without exception they are congratulating us for taking that step.
“You don’t have to be serious all the time,” she said.
Anyone who doesn’t have email can phone and leave their snail-mail address for correspondence.