Late Delivery Mars Promotion

As I opened the May 15, 2006, issue of DM News, the dinosaur ride-along "cut through the clutter" of the daily mail. Imagine my surprise when it was from the U.S. Postal Service offering a FREE DVD on how "Mail" can help me survive.

This type of promotion by USPS took me back several years to the Lanham, MD, post office. The small lobby was jammed with holiday mailers with packages, but scarce space was taken by promotional materials and samples of the latest USPS offering: coffee cups.

So, is this my beef? Not really. My "real world," "first things first" complaint is that your May 15 publication was delivered May 27. DM News should not be happy about the delivery performance, but how do you think your advertisers feel? Especially Merkle, on page 16, who invited me to an "Executive Summit" on May 21-23. Sorry, Merkle. Maybe you could have better luck sending a dinosaur invitation, which according to the mouse-type, is " ... an actual mail piece that can be sent without an envelope. Awesome, huh?"

Jack F. Barton, Forbes Direct Response Inc.

Sarasota, FL