I get lots of junk mail. A fair amount of my junk mail comes from promotions that my mortgage companies and their partners send my way. I can usually spot junk mail by looking at the envelope, but the sneaky devils at Coldwell Banker Mortgage (aka Cendant Mortgage) like to put their junk mail in the same envelopes as important statements, thus making it more likely to be read. (Of course this also makes their important tax statements more likely to be tossed!)

Never before has junk mail made me laugh like it did today. I received an offer from the Liberty Life Insurance Company who partnered with Coldwell Banker Mortgage to send me an offer I couldn’t refuse…to not laugh at. (Click here for the letter in PDF.) Rather than focusing on why their life insurance is the best, they decided to focus on how mortal I am. They went so far as to include a list of ways in which I might die, including bicycle accidents, choking, pedestrian accidents, falls from ladders, food poisoning, contact with machinery, accidental firearms discharge, forces of nature, drowning, electrocution and fire.

My God! I had never realized there were so many ways in which I might die! I was quite comfortable living an ignorant life of the danger around me until the fine folks at the Liberty Life Insurance Company pointed out the perils of life that may one day do me in. Clearly I need to buy their life insurance. How could I have lived so long without it? Dying without it must be even worse!

I can just picture the boardroom meeting that took place while this letter was being drafted. Did they have a list of ways to die up on a whiteboard? Which suggestions were scratched before the letter was finalized? Tiger attack? (Too unlikely, despite recent events.) Terrorist attack? (Already too overplayed.) How about run over by a steamroller? Yes, that happens too.

The letter continues…

“What are my chances of having a fatal accident?”
Consider these statistics in the United States alone:

• Someone dies in an accident every 5 minutes.
• In just one year, more than 40,000 people died in auto related accidents.
• In that same period, more than 33,000 people died as a result of accidents that happened in their own homes.

On the back of the letter they go on to say:

According to the National Safety Council, an accident claims the life of one American every six minutes. [Notice this is inconsisent with what was said on the front of the letter.] But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. You see it on the evening news and on our roads and highways. It’s a risk we all live with. Now, you can be prepared - with Mortgage Decreasing Accidental Death Insurance from Liberty Life Insurance Company.

And here I thought CNN, MSNBC and Fox News were already doing a good enough job trying to scare people about their imminent deaths. Fear is such a great motivator. Used by governments, hostage takers and cult leaders, I shouldn’t be surprised to see marketers using it now too.

*Sigh* I liked the 1990’s much better when they used sex to sell instead of fear.

Tonight Sidney Crosby (now of the Pittsburgh Penguins) appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As a huge fan of the city of Pittsburgh, I was eager to see Sidney interviewed and was looking forward to the positive press Pittsburgh would receive from his appearance.

Jay asked Sidney if he had ever been to Pittsburgh before. When Sidney said no, Jay played a really outdated video that must have been from the 1960’s created by the city of Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. The video featured really old shots of our skyline and said something like, “Pittsburgh… we have steel mills and department stores!”

I have a sense of humor, and I don’t consider myself to be somebody who is easily made to be upset, but I think that “Pittsburgh the dirty steel city” stopped being a punchline many years ago. In my opinion, Pittsburgh is this country’s best kept secret. It’s clean, there are a lot of technology companies, it features the amenities of a city more than double its size and the people are some of the nicest you’ll meet. I’ve been to almost every major city in this country from Seattle to Boston and Pittsburgh is by far my favorite.

Jay, come visit Pittsburgh and see for yourself!