Harper's Offer Draws Rapid Response

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 1, 2001 by Joe Hagan

On October 8, Eric Pacquet of Gatineau, Quebec, retrieved from his mailbox a letter that immediately raised his suspicions. Sent by one John R. MacArthur of 666 Broadway, New York, New York, the envelope was covered with a number of provocative statements like "How the CIA subverts the U.S. government" and "How the Pentagon hides $22 million." Pacquet, knowing exactly no one from New York City and worried by the inflammatory rhetoric, promptly phoned the Gatineau-Metro police, believing he might be the next victim of a bioterrorism attack.

Pacquet wasn't a target, however. The sender, known to acquaintances as Rick MacArthur, is the president and publisher of the 151-year-old Harper's, the witty monthly edited by Lewis Lapham. Inside the envelope was an offer to receive a free copy of the magazine with a 12-issue subscription for $19.97; the offer was part of a 30,000-piece direct mail campaign meant to build circulation north of the border.

Needless to say, the signer of the letter was astonished-and amused: "The Canadian police called my substitute secretary [Carolyne Maldonado] on Wednesday," recalls MacArthur. "We got a complaint, or a question, from somebody, wondering if [it] has some national security or terrorist implication. It shows you how nervous people are."

Maldonado, unaware at the time of any direct mail sent by her boss, says a Gatineau-Metro police officer "told me he had some mail and they were afraid to open it. I told him, 'If it's Harper's I don't know why you'd be afraid to open it.'"

Lieutenant Denis Piche of the Gatineau-Metro police says that while Gatineau had had no anthrax scares, there had been a few across the river in Ottawa. So, Fiche says authorities took it seriously, adding that "they were just concerned because it was from New York."

Pacquet himself could not be reached for comment.

Has the incident prompted MacArthur to change the look of the potentially frightening direct mail envelope from Harper's?

"No," says MacArthur. "If anything, it proves that the package has impact. It gets people's attention."