Cagle World

When Stew Leonard opened what he dubbed a “dairy store” in Norwalk, Conn., in 1969, it was a wonder of marketing, with a petting zoo, animated Disney-style characters and an on-site bottling plant. There were serious retailing strategies as well—a limited product line, attractive house brands, slick promotions and an abundance of free samples. The concepts pioneered in that supermarket are seen today at Trader Joe’s, Costco and Whole Foods.

You’d think such an innovator would resent — even threaten legal action against — those who profited off his ideas. Not Leonard, who died last week at 93. He encouraged and even mentored food merchants around the world.

Having lived for a time near Norwalk, I came to know Leonard and his son, Stew Jr., who now runs the operation which has expanded to seven stores in the tri-state area. An eighth store, Tom Leonard’s in Glen Allen, Va., is operated by another son. The family once hired me to conduct promotional video interviews with customers. “I’m a journalist and I ask tough, critical questions,” I warned. Their response was, “We’re not worried.”

It turned out that the shoppers — some of whom had driven 100 miles for the experience — were uniformly positive. Indeed, they acted like kids at Disneyland.

Stew Leonard’s boldest retailing concept was to have a single aisle winding through the entire layout, taking shoppers past every item offered until they arrived back where they entered. No one runs in for a quart of milk or a single loaf of bread, which most supermarket operators count on, but the gimmick earned the store a place in the Guinness World Records for having the highest dollar sales per square foot of selling space.

People like Paul Newman, Martha Stewart, Frank Purdue and Sam Walton were among Leonard’s friends and admirers. That admiration was tested soon after his retirement in 1990, when customs agents in St. Martin found that his suitcase contained $70,000 in cash. It led to uncovering a tax-fraud scheme to divert $17.1 million by using a custom-made computer program that produced two sets of books. Cash was hidden in the fireplace in Leonard’s Norwalk office, then transported out of the country.

During his 44 months in a Pennsylvania prison, he persuaded officials to let him conduct retailing seminars — not just for inmates, but for merchants in nearby towns. He explained how in the 1920s his father, Charles Leonard, delivered milk by horse and buggy. Just 21 when Charles died, Stew took over Clover Farms Dairy in Connecticut and began honing the marketing skills that would make him rich. Delivery trucks were fitted with animated cow heads on top that made sounds. Painted on the sides of the trucks: “You Wave and I’ll Moo!” He bought out a neighboring dairy and doubled his business. But the popularity of home-delivered milk was fading, so he borrowed as much as he could to build what many would later refer to as “The Disneyland of Dairy Stores.”

His prison lecture also outlined his core business philosophy, STEW: S-satisfy the customer; T-Teamwork gets it done; E-Excellence makes it better; W-Wow makes it fun.

Stew Jr. once told me his dad was truly sorry. He appeared to be a generally decent man who got caught up in what he foolishly convinced himself was a victimless crime, served his time, and tried to pay back. Customers I spoke with were saddened, but quick to forgive.

And that had special meaning at Stew Leonard’s, where a three-ton chunk of granite in front of the store has the inscription: “Rule #1: The Customer is Always Right”; Rule #2: If the Customer is Ever Wrong, Re-Read Rule #1.”

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Copyright 2023 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s latest book is “Playing POTUS: The Power of America’s Acting Presidents,” about comedians who impersonated presidents.

Even baseball purists like myself, who still aren’t comfortable with designated hitters and restrictions on where fielders may be positioned, find themselves overwhelmingly in favor of the new pitch clock.

Requiring pitchers to throw within 15 seconds (20 if there are runners on base) has not only shortened games, it has made the confrontation between batter and pitcher more inherently fair — so much so that the concept should be applied to other aspects of our lives.

Restaurants, for example, need time clocks even more than baseball does, starting at the front desk. Rather than handing out pagers to notify patrons that their table is ready, folks should be given a timer. For every five minutes beyond the promised waiting time, the bill is reduced by two bucks.

Each table should also have a clock, like the one used in chess matches. Your order is given and the server hits the clock — over 20 minutes and it’s half price; beyond 30 minutes and it’s free. The tables would turn, so to speak, when the check arrives. Customers are allowed 15 minutes to dawdle and then, if others are waiting, must depart or pay an additional fee.

The same clock could be used for dinner table conversation, with each person given equal time before interruptions are permitted.

We have some examples of clock management already, such as on the entrance ramps to highways where timed metering lights control traffic during rush hours. Why not install timers for lines in banks or pharmacies?

I’d love to see a big flashing timer in my dentist’s waiting room. For every five minutes spent waiting beyond the scheduled appointment time, cash is extracted from the bill.

It’s possible, however, that people aren’t ready for well-timed efficiency in their lives. Some years ago I conducted an experiment on “Candid Camera” at the Jiffy lube store in Queens, N.Y., where a sign in the window promised an oil change and lube job in just 10 minutes.

On the day we were there, customers in the waiting room were told a minute after they sat down that their cars were ready. Most were stressed by the rapid service. One man, in startled disbelief, said, “It takes me five minutes just to open an oil can!”

There is, I suppose, a time and a place for everything, including time itself.

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Copyright 2023 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

In the delightful 1986 film “The Money Pit,” a novice homeowner, played by Tom Hanks, carves a heart in a tree as a gesture to his girlfriend (Shelley Long), only to watch in horror as it falls over. He informs her sadly, “We have weak trees.”

So do I. And if ever those of us living on California’s beautiful Central Coast needed confirmation, we’re getting it in this strange winter of excessive rain, wind and other expressions of nature’s wrath.

Long before there was talk about climate change, trees known as Monterey Pines took root in these parts. If you’ve never seen one, picture a 75-foot lollipop propped in a shallow bed of sandy soil. It’s tall, top-heavy and supported by flimsy roots. It doesn’t take much to make these majestic giants tumble—and when they do, the roots just pop out of the ground, leaving a hole barely larger than the ones golfers aim for at the nearby links.

The other day, a seemingly healthy pine crashed across the road in front of my house, knocking out power. A week earlier, a neighbor was awakened at 4 a.m. when a Monterey Pine fell through his front door. Panicked, the guy got permission (you need that here) to cut down five similar trees in his front yard, leaving just one remaining specimen standing at the corner.

When the next storm hit, that giant tree keeled over, roots and all — mercifully falling away from my friend’s house. I’ve lost five big trees on my one-acre property this winter; along our block the total is about two dozen. The Pebble Beach Company estimated that nearly 200 large Monterey Pines in the 5,300-acre Del Monte Forest fell in just one day last week.

I found an article in an old Sunset magazine that summed up the matter succinctly. A Monterey Pine, it said, “gets damaged by smog; loses lower limbs and, with them, any pretense of being a wind or privacy screen; drops great quantities of needles; blows over in high winds; breaks walks and driveways and clogs sewers with its roots.” The report went on to say the beloved species, “gets infested with insects and mites, doesn’t live very long (as few as 15 years), and sometimes inexplicably falls over.”

A few years ago my homeowners’ insurance was abruptly canceled when the provider decided these closely bunched trees posed too great a threat by falling or catching fire. I managed to get costly coverage from another company, but the fine print says I’m liable if a poorly maintained pine lands on someone or something.

Folks feel the same way about the local deer population as they do the troublesome trees. They’re beautiful and clearly part of nature’s plan, yet there are too many of them and they wind up causing a lot of damage.

Sitting here without power for the ninth day this winter, and looking at the mess of fallen timber on the street outside, I’m musing about Joyce Kilmer. While only God can make a tree, the rest of us are charged with cleaning it up.

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Copyright 2023 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

When the Academy Awards are handed out March 12, one of Hollywood’s most confounding contradictions will be on display. The Oscar for Best Documentary will go to a film that few Americans have seen or even heard of. Yet, at the same time, streaming audiences are embracing documentaries in unprecedented numbers, creating a boom for the misunderstood genre.

What is a documentary? Among international producers, and a few domestic outlets such as PBS, it remains a form of journalism with an implied pledge that the content is accurate and compiled at arm’s length from its subjects. For streaming services, however, documentaries are increasingly undisciplined, highly commercial products for which celebrities are well paid and their precious footage treated with care.

One of the most-watched documentaries ever, the recent “Harry & Meghan,” totaled 81 million viewing hours in just its first four days. Yet, the New Yorker’s critic said, “Viewers may find themselves wishing for a more rigorous and investigative exposé.” CNBC noted, “few difficult questions asked and a lack of critical voices throughout.” That’s hardly surprising considering that the documentary was produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s own company, Archewell, as part of an overall deal in which Netflix paid the couple a reported $100 million.

Television documentaries were once low-budget projects, aimed at winning awards or satisfying FCC public service requirements. As streaming emerged, and with it better audience research, it became clear that there was a large audience for documentaries — but only certain styles, primarily celebrity bios and true-crime.

Contrast that with the five Oscar-nominated documentaries this year — “All that Breathes,” “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” “Fire of Love,” “House Made of Splinters” and “Navalny” — only one of which reached a million dollars at the box office. Such documentaries are generally shunned by domestic audiences, while Hollywood grinds out pseudo-docs such as two on HBO Max about Lizzo that the singer herself executive-produced, or seven different documentaries about serial killer Ted Bundy.

Commercial pressure within the industry goes even deeper. “Buyers are frightened by black-and-white footage,” one producer told me. How incredible that vintage material, once the core of well-researched documentaries, is now anathema to modern marketing.

When it comes to celebrity docs, a new twist involves the growing awareness among politicians, performers and athletes that the market value of their story is likely to increase in direct proportion to the amount of footage available to tell it. This has created a new job in the entourage of many VIPs: full-time videographer, compiling footage that might someday be sold to the highest bidder.

To be clear, doc-making has long included some subterfuge. One of the earliest popular examples, the 1922 film “Nanook of the North,” was about a man supposedly living in the Canadian tundra, untouched by the outside world. But his real name was Allakariallak. His wife in the film wasn’t his wife. He hunted with a gun, but the director told him to use a harpoon.

A producer of “Harry & Meghan,” Dan Cogan, recently told “Vulture,” “People talk about the golden age of documentary, and it was exciting to be a part of that. We left that age three or four years ago and we now live in the corporate age of documentary.”

The field is bigger than ever, the budgets are higher, and the distortion runs deeper. The real story about what’s happened to documentaries is one Hollywood doesn’t care to tell.

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Copyright 2023 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

It hard to tell what’s changing faster, the weather or words used to describe it.

I’ve lived on the Central California coast for some time and have endured many winter storms that line up in the Pacific and swirl across our state. We used to refer to such weather as the Pineapple Express, a playful non-meteorological term reflecting the fact that heavy rain sometimes originates as far away as Hawaii.

There was no confusion. When the forecast mentioned a Pineapple Express we knew we were in for a lengthy drenching.

Recently, forecasters and journalists, apparently eager for more drama, have taken to describing these storms as “atmospheric rivers.” According to Geophysical Research Letters the term describes “long, meandering plumes of water vapor often originating over the tropical oceans that bring sustained, heavy precipitation to the west coasts of North America and northern Europe.”

Now that the phrasing has gone public, pretty much every forecast that includes rain calls it an atmospheric river.

The current rainy season has been marked by an even more frightening term, producing headlines like this one from from AccuWeather on Jan. 6: “Deadly combination of bomb cyclone, atmospheric river drenches West Coast.”

Bomb cyclone? This term of weather art is actually rooted in a basic but unwieldy scientific phenomenon, bombogenesis, which refers to a rapid drop in pressure. Plucking “bomb” from the word seems more alarmist than informative.

The Weather Channel adds to the fright by giving winter storms names — even though neither the National Weather Service nor any other reputable news outlet uses them.

According to Paul Gross, a veteran meteorologist based in Detroit, “There is no need whatsoever to name winter storms.” Yet, The Weather Channel has come up with a list of names for this season’s storms, including Fernando, Xar and — my personal favorite —Iggy.

“Naming winter storms instills unnecessary fear into some people,” explains Mr. Gross, “because you are assigning a perceived similar level of risk to that winter storm as you might a hurricane.”

We’ve had some nasty weather this season, causing real damage and hardship. But ginning up terms that shed more heat — or, depending on the season, cold — than light doesn’t help the situation.

I’m waiting for folks at The Weather Channel to achieve even greater tension by naming their next bomb cyclone “Vladimir.”

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Copyright 2023 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

Barbara Walters might never have become a powerful force in broadcast journalism had she lacked the chutzpah to extract a promise from her bosses at NBC News in 1973.

As she explained it to me, she had already worked at the “Today” show for a dozen years, serving first as a writer and then as the “Today girl” on set — a bubbly balance to the program’s male host, the journalist Frank McGee. If McGee were ever to leave, NBC pledged, she would be named co-host, an unprecedented role for a woman.

Eight months later, McGee died of cancer. Five days after that, Walters was named co-host and given a voice in selecting her new on-air partner, the unassuming newsman from local TV, Jim Hartz.

Almost every obit about Barbara Walters, who died Dec. 30 at 93, mentions that she “broke the glass ceiling” in TV news. A measure of the enormity of that challenge was contained in Frank McGee’s own arrangement with NBC, stipulating that during in-studio interviews he would always ask the first three questions, lest viewers conclude that the woman at his side was of equal status.

I suppose it would be considered a compliment to say that McGee was a shrewd negotiator. But to use the same term about Walters would be perceived quite negatively, especially a half-century ago. She was, indeed, shrewd. And demanding. And often manipulative in dealing with superiors, writers like me who covered her and, most of all, the wide range of politicians and showbiz celebrities whom she persuaded to open up — even shed tears — on camera.

She left NBC in 1976 to become TV’s highest-paid news anchor at the time, seated alongside Harry Reasoner on the “ABC Evening News.” Her $1 million annual salary was roughly double what CBS icon Walter Cronkite was earning.

Privately, Reasoner dismissed the new pairing as so much network gimmickry. For her part, Walters acknowledged on her first broadcast that some viewers might have tuned in, “out of curiosity, drawn by the rather too much attention and overblown publicity given to my new duties and my hourly wage.”

She survived the flop that the ABC newscast turned out to be and managed to parlay it into a robust career focused primarily on interviewing, for which she was best known. Even that included careful calculation. Though she did interviews both live and recorded, she preferred the latter format. “Whoever holds the scissors controls the entire interview,” she told me.

Whenever I wrote about her, even a brief mention, I received a hand-written thank you note in the mail. I wasn’t flattered so much as I was impressed by a woman who knew she had to work harder to compete in a male-dominated field.

There are a lot of women in broadcasting today who would like to send Barbara Walters a note of thanks.

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Copyright 2023 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

I grew up believing that you judge a man by the size of his Christmas tree.

Each December my father and I would jump in our Willys Jeep and rush over to the local drive-in theater. Though closed to moviegoers for the season, the spacious parking area was rented out to the Lions Club for its annual Christmas tree sale.

Dad never failed to ask the sellers, “Don’t you have anything bigger?” And he was always certain to assure me, “Don’t worry, Pete, it will fit in the living room.”

The Lions were happy to get rid of their largest tree — usually 12 to 14 feet tall — because few customers had interest in such a bulky specimen. Tied precariously to the Jeep, we drove it home, where I knew the height of our ceiling to be exactly 9 feet.

Cutting off the bottom would have been too easy. “That’s where the best branches are,” dad insisted as he whacked off the top, leaving what no longer looked like a tree but rather a rotund mass of shapeless pine. So unstable was this monster that we needed to secure it with baling wire, strung to the radiator, the couch and even mom’s piano.

New ornaments were purchased every year, but since we could never part with the old, broken ones, the volume of metal and glass kept increasing. The fancy star on top was shrouded because our tree didn’t come to a point, it only stopped when it reached the ceiling.

Some branches snapped under the weight of ornaments, creating a need for more baling wire to hold them in place. Our tree shed needles furiously because we had far too many heat-producing lights. Mom vacuumed under the tree daily, but as soon as she finished our cat Lolly would attack, causing another cascade of needles.

I think dad enjoyed the chaos he created each year and the problem-solving process that brought the family together. It’s nice when things go well, but my fondest holiday recollections are rooted in relatively harmless, even humorous, adversity.

Turns out the size of your tree means less than the magnitude of your memories.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

When it comes to sappy holiday movies, you either scorn them as you would another pair of reindeer-themed socks, or you eagerly binge on offerings such as “My Southern Family Christmas,” produced by Hallmark and described thusly:

“Under the guise of a journalist, Campbell has a chance to get to know her biological father for the first time — without him ever knowing who she really is. … Campbell must decide if she’s going to keep her identity a secret or reveal the truth to her father — a decision that will change their family Christmas forever.”

You can’t make this stuff up. Well, actually, you can if you work at Hallmark, which for the third straight year has managed to produce a cache of 40 highly-profitable holiday movies. Since imitation is the sincerest form of television (a line credited to Fred Allen), it’s not surprising that 27 different networks and streamers have jumped in this year and combined to produce a record number of largely lookalike holiday films. The industry-wide total is a remarkable 158.

For Hallmark, it’s the most wonderful time of year in terms of ratings and revenue. I estimate that the company spends a bit over $100 million to produce its Christmas films, many of which are shot in Canada to reduce costs. The Hallmark Channel reportedly reaps about one-third of its annual revenue from the 40 projects, or about $350 million, and this year it partnered with NBC to stream its movies on Peacock.

Leading the pack in popularity so far is “Falling for Christmas” on Netflix, which was gifted with more than 31 million views in its first four days. The draw probably isn’t the tired plot (a woman with amnesia falls for a handsome stranger at Christmas) but rather the return of actress Lindsay Lohan after years away from the screen.

The upstart Great American Family channel produced 18 Christmas films this year and managed to stir some controversy. The service is run by Bill Abbott, a former Hallmark exec, who lured one of holiday filmmaking’s biggest stars, Candace Cameron Bure, away from Hallmark to produce and star in Christmas movies that were less secular than the sort Hallmark favors. “I knew that the people behind Great American Family were Christians that love the Lord,” Bure said in an interview, “and wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment.”

Hallmark, meanwhile, is aggressively broadening its holiday storytelling and next month will offer “The Holiday Sitter,” its first Christmas film with an LGBT love story. Bure caused a fuss on social media after saying she isn’t keen on such themes.

The Lifetime channel is releasing 26 holiday titles this season. My favorite, at least based on the blurb, is “Santa Bootcamp,” in which an event planner named Emily is sent off to holiday bootcamp and meets “a drill sergeant with a heart of gold, who helps Emily rediscover the magic of Christmas and find romance along the way.”

Even the shopping channel QVC has produced a holiday film, “Holly and the Hot Chocolate,” about a food critic who finds herself stuck in the small town of Pine Falls at Christmas. But wait, there’s more! QVC is selling a special hot chocolate in partnership with gourmet retailer Serendipity.

How much holiday film fluff can viewers handle? So far, ratings are substantial, ad revenue is robust, and currently — perhaps due to economic and political malaise — the appetite appears almost limitless for formulaic fare that seems to get viewers where they want to go.

The frenzy is so great that TV is even making a Christmas movie about making a Christmas movie. “When a holiday rom-com movie shooting in her town needs a costume designer, Kerry, a local shop owner, steps into the role,” says the blurb. “She rediscovers her passion for costume design and finds herself falling for Brad, the film’s famous leading man.”

Hallmark calls this film, “Lights, Camera, Christmas!” which pretty much sums up the holiday viewing season.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

A sheriff’s deputy roared into our driveway the other morning, rang the bell, and asked my wife if she knew my whereabouts.

Alarmed at first, then puzzled, Amy answered honestly: “He’s gone over to the Apple Store to see if they can fix his iPhone.”

Across town, I was telling a friendly clerk named Sheila how I had been walking our dog when the phone in my pants pocket made an odd sound. Finding that the screen was frozen, I tried to power it off. This action somehow triggered an SOS call to 911. Soon I heard a police dispatcher offering help, but she was unable to hear me. I tried repeatedly to shut-off the phone and each time another 911 call was triggered.

Sheila didn’t seem surprised. She said such an occurrence — a “glitch” is what she called it — happens frequently. Indeed, the deputy was telling Amy the same thing: Increased use of smartphones and watches is causing a rash of accidental emergency calls and distracting officers from legitimate missions.

Of the many mixed blessings that technology has bestowed upon us, this is a doozy. Yes, many people have been rescued by their smart devices — as commercial reenactments for Apple watches so dramatically illustrate. Yet, as I poked around local news sites I found that numerous municipalities have been struggling with time consuming false alarms.

Two summers ago, the state police in Maine noticed what Lt. Brian Harris termed “quite an uptick” in accidental emergency calls. He mentioned a local golfer who placed his phone in his cart’s cup holder as he bounced around the course, unaware that the movement was initiating calls to 911.

In Grand Traverse County, Michigan, police get about 120 emergency calls a day and about every fourth one is a misdial.

In Canada, the E-Comm emergency service says accidental calls are flooding its lines. In a news release, E-Comm said operators often hear singing in the background or cheering at sporting events during 911 calls. Still, the operators must do whatever is needed to confirm it is not an actual emergency.

There has been publicity recently about problems with the iPhone 14 Pro’s car-crash detection system. A significant number of false reports come from amusement parks, where roller coasters and other high-speed rides are fooling the devices into thinking the owner has been in a crash. The Arkansas State Fair put out a warning last month about false iPhone messaging. In Sevier County, Tennessee, dispatchers reported a 150 percent increase in bogus 911 calls, most of them from the Dollywood amusement park.

But as my experience (with an iPhone 12) confirms, the problem goes beyond crash detection. With some Apple products, simply holding the side button for several seconds can trigger an SOS. Depending on the information stored on the device, this can result in emergency messages being sent to not only police but to your personal contacts as well.

A check of Apple message boards shows that complaints go back several years. Typical was the 2019 post from “TH55” who reported making three accidental calls to 911 and wrote, “Emergency SOS is literally the stupidest feature Apple has ever implemented.”

Apple’s website provides instructions on how to end emergency calls that are triggered by mistake. “If you start an emergency call by accident, tap the End Call button, then tap Yes to confirm that you want to stop the call,” it explains. But Apple says continuing to hold the buttons down will automatically prompt an SOS call.

With police and rescue personnel stretched thin in many parts of the country, it’s unacceptable for hundreds of false alarms to be triggered needlessly. As my experience showed, simply walking with an iPhone in your pocket can lead to the dispatching of police, while the phone’s owner is unable to communicate or correct the error.

It turns out that just last month Apple issued the first beta version of its iOS 16.2 software. It doesn’t correct the problem, but it does include a new option for users to notify Apple whenever they accidentally report an emergency.

I suppose that’s a start. But it would be better to implement an actual fix that preserves the life-saving aspects of smartphone technology without sending so many police officers on wild SOS chases.

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Copyright 2022 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.

An unsolicited solicitation package from Boys Town arrived by mail the other day, earlier and bulkier than usual. I’ve given to a lot of charities, but the Nebraska-based organization, founded in 1917 by Father Edward Flanagan, has never been one of them. Yet, the volume of free stuff they sent this year made me wonder about the effectiveness of guilt-driven marketing.

The “Christmas Appeal” package included three pens (two ballpoints and one felt tip), two pairs of socks, a full-color 2023 wall calendar, eight holiday cards with envelopes, a sheet of gift labels and, predictably, dozens of personalized return address stickers.

Can it possibly pay to invest in so much merchandise for someone with no history of donating? It would seem so, because Boys Town pretty much invented the model and has been using it effectively since 1923 when Father Flanagan mailed his first free calendar. During the Depression, when times and fundraising were tough, he even sent out woolen blankets.

Today, Boys Town receives about $160 million in annual donations, more than half of it from direct mail appeals.

As I examined the loot I wondered what to do. The pens are useful, the calendar is rather nice, and the greeting cards alone will save me several dollars come December. But am I obliged to make a donation? The Federal Trade Commission clearly states, “You may keep such shipments as free gifts.” But that doesn’t address the emotional quandary.

I placed a call to Thomas Lynch, Director of Community Service Programs at Boys Town. A chipper fellow, he began by saying that Father Flanagan, who died in 1948, was “a marketing genius,” who knew that people would be more likely to read a solicitation if it was accompanied by a gift (puzzle books were early favorites). He found, as Mr. Lynch noted, “Many people feel that if they receive a gift they should give one in return.”

Moreover, Flanagan determined that it was acceptable to lose money in a mail campaign’s initial years as long as it paid out over time. “Once someone sends a donation,” Mr. Lynch explains, “they and their families will be donors for a long time, maybe for generations.”

As mailing costs climbed in recent decades, many charities looked for other channels to reach potential donors. But Boys Town doubled down beginning in 2005, increasing its direct mail spending 70%. By 2012 net profit from the campaigns had doubled.

Boys Town gathers a lot of feedback from donors. One thing that came clear was that people enjoy the free gifts more if they don’t have the words Boys Town on them, which is why the greeting cards and even the socks are not branded.

Mr. Lynch refused comment on his costs of acquisition. He did mention that the socks — kids’ size, with holiday images — are new, so it’s too early to tell if they will be effective as fund-raisers. Or guilt producers.

“Some people pay the postage and send it all back to us,” Mr. Lynch conceded. Do they ever include a donation? “No,” he said. “I’m afraid that doesn’t happen.”

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Copyright 2022 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s new memoir, “Self-Amused,” is now available at CandidCamera.com.