Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaxn | Hacker News Reader

I ran for public office earlier this year and did this kind of thing.

I used MyScriptFont to create 10 different fonts of my handwriting using a sharpie. Then I wrote a script that would randomize each letter. We used this to create "hand addressed" envelopes that looked like I had written them with a felt tip pen. Two could go to the same address and you couldn't tell it wasn't hand written. We also did a series of letters and they were very effective. Every time we dropped one, my phone would ring from people calling me because they received my letter and wanted to talk about it.

This article isn't about marketing automation, it is about lazy marketing automation.

View on HN

At the risk of excessive bluntness, isn't that pretty dishonest? You deceived voters into thinking they were individually important enough to you to spend your limited time personally handwriting a letter to them, while in fact the letters were mass produced and didn't reflect any individualized attention.

Jaxn, don't pay attention to this guy.

Thanks for telling us about what you did campaigning as a politician, and keep it coming.

The truth we learn is worth a lot more than ad hominem moraliziing.

Show me a campaign law that was broken doing this and I'll consider it a valid point. As it is, a candidate who does this to get my attention is probably a candidate I will likely pay attention to. If their message ends up sucking and I dont like their policies, I throw it in the trash and move on with my life.

End of the day, politics is a numbers game and moralizing over the typeface of a letter that at worst ends up in the junk heap is the last thing worth even an iota of energy getting comparatively upset about.

If someone feels so strongly about slick typeface maneuvers to get voters opening an envelope, I'd encourage that person to run for office themselves and make outlawing that sort of activity a campaign promise and let us know how it goes.

It's not about what's legal or illegal. It's about what is right and moral and indicative of character.

So he starts his political career with a clever font hack, a little fib to his potential voters. Apparently not worth an iota of concern. So what's the next fib? Perhaps a broken election promise that he never intended to keep, just playing the numbers game? And so it may continue.

We always complain about our politicians looking after their own interests first. If we just shrug when they start their career like this, treating the electorate as a group to be tricked and fooled into action, is it any wonder?

I encourage you to run for office some day.

Have you ever gotten a political party "survey." You get this large packet, very expensive feeling, with a "serial number" on it so it looks custom for you. You go through the survey questions, and they are all right down the middle of how you feel about the country. "Yeah! I want us to ____!" You get hyped up knowing that the party will really deliver (this time).

And then you get to the end and it's got a donation form to give to the party, so that they can do everything you filled out in the survey. Probably very effective for many party members who don't think about it deeply.

Now, does that sort of campaign marketing material present a moral problem? I think it's just good marketing.

We could make a broader point about how all marketing wants you to envision yourself with [product / experience / political leader] and how that will make your life better. Is it all lies? Mostly. Is it immoral? Nah, it's just marketing :-)

Overall I found your response rather cynical. Implying law being broken is required for a previous comment to be a valid point is harsh. There's campaign law and there's ethics. Just because some behaviour was never codified into law doesn't make it right.

Having said that, I think the ethics of this political strategy depends on the intentions. If a politician has true respect for the people, wants to give personal touch, and just doesn't have enough time to handwrite the letters - that's okay in my view. If a politician is purely looking for means of influence - that in my opinion is "not okay".

If they never read your letter, then the contents of it don't matter.

The "handwriting hack" is all about getting people to open the letter and read it. I didn't get phone calls from constituents because of the handwriting, the phone calls were because of the content.

Overall I found your response rather cynical. Implying law being broken is required for a previous comment to be a valid point is harsh.

The comment is valid, I don't think your premise is valid because I don't think the lines were sufficiently drawn to either a prescriptive or descriptive concept established in law. I also think the "ethical" premise is invalid equally.

I'm allowed to think premises are invalid and speak up on them; as of yet there hasn't been a convincing enough argument towards the 'ickiness' of using handwritten typefaces in a letter to possible voters to convince me otherwise.

If you're going to sit there and call that cynical, fine. That's on you, but I still think both premises are broken.

You're conflating legal rights with moral rights.

Maybe at some pedantic level you can argue it is deceitful.

It is common practice to use handwriting fonts to increase the response rate of mail. It is easy to discern that they are fonts. I just made it much harder to discern.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com