Ylva Lundberg: Why American envelopes needs more color

Hi there, Last week something scary happened. I woke up and left the building for my one minute walk to the office. But, the hot, sweaty humidity that hits me in the face when I open the front door was gone! I was so sad. Did I only get one month of hot sweaty weather?! Luckily this was just a two day event and now the heat is on again. I am happy!

The last weeks I have been focusing on doing some benchmarking research to see how other publishing companies work on their direct mails, e-mails and inserts. I have now gathered a lot of information and samples so now it is all about putting it all together and finish the report. What really hits me is how different direct mails look here compared to in Sweden. Here most of the direct mails are put in small white envelopes that don't really tell much about the content or the offer. In Sweden the direct mails are usually of a much larger size and scream out their message with bright colors and a lot of splashes here and there. I think it is essential to get people to open the envelopes so I would like to see a bit more color and stronger communication on the direct mail here. Apparently it costs too much to change the size but I'm sure the response would increase a lot so maybe it would be worth it in the long run.

Two weekends ago I almost felt like I was back in Europe when Orlando was invaded by different celebrations of the German Oktoberfest. Of course we had to explore one of the parties and for 20 $ we enjoyed an all you can drink German beer buffet. I felt very German with a beer in my hand dancing on the tables with my European friends. My beer experience continued last week when I and some friends accidentally bumped into a free food and beer festival here in Winter Park. I love to accidentally bump in to things like that, especially while we were on our way home discussing where to go out for dinner. They served food from all over the world and a woman, originally from Morocco, asked me where I'm from and I said Malmo, Sweden. Then she says she just spoke to her brother on the phone who is a bus driver in Malmo! The world is small, for sure!

There have been more exploring of Florida this weekend. I have some visitors over from Sweden so we went down to Miami to continue my hunt for alligators as well as my hunt for the wild life of South Beach. We didn't really find any wild alligators but we went on an airboat tour which was as exciting as finding an alligator. We got the front row with the best view which also includes getting soaked when Mr. Airboat chauffeur did a 360 to make the ride even more exciting. This exciting ride was followed by a very exciting night in Miami Beach. Sunday morning was a very tired one so South Beach and the beautiful clear ocean was the perfect medicine.

I'm now back home in good old Orlando to focus on my report, so back to work. Ciao.