WGN hit a more than 50% response rate this spring with a small, highly personalized mailing targeting advertisers on Chicago Cubs’ games.

The radio station sent 300 letters to vice presidents and directors of marketing at major corporate advertisers like Miller Beer, General Motors and others inviting them to an opening day party and ballgame. Each letter included a personalized URL like john.smith.wgn720openingday2009.com where the recipients could reply, says Frank Defino, Jr., managing partner at Tukaiz, WGN’s agency.

“When they RSVP’d, they viewed a Flash animated movie showing them with their name on the back of a baseball player’s jersey standing in the batter’s box,” says Defino.

The online movie went on to show the recipient hitting a home run and rounding the bases as he watched the ball wind up in the bleachers. The scoreboard then lit up with fireworks and spelled the recipient’s name.

Past efforts to promote this event were more prosaic. “They went out in a number-10 envelope that said, ‘We’re having this party, here’s the date. Come two hours before, there’s food and drink and then you get to go to the game on opening day,’ ” says Defino.

Just the same, WGN was able to use this technique to help boost its image.

“They weren’t trying to sell anything,” says Defino. “They were trying to get their advertisers to come to a branding event.”

THE HOUSE Postal Subcommittee has completed hearings on chairman John McHugh’s Postal Modernization Act of 1999, a bill five years in the making. But will it ever become law?

That depends. It depends on whether the U.S. Postal Service can be satisfied with the bill that makes it to the House floor. It depends on whether companies like Federal Express and United Parcel Service can live with the “safeguards” the marked-up bill will provide against any alleged USPS “unfairness.” It depends on whether any of the postal unions that hold a position other than the “Just say no” malarkey propounded by the American Postal Workers Union will have the guts to take a public stand.

Postmaster General William Henderson has acknowledged that without legislative reform, the postal service’s days may be numbered. Those numbered days could represent a countdown to a reform that will make all parties affected hunger for McHugh’s thoughtful measure.

Maybe the USPS’ adversaries believe an angry Republican-dominated legislature will produce reform more radically tailored to their liking. Maybe the postal unions feel a Democratic sweep of the 2000 elections will bring an administration and Congress more disposed to recasting the postal service into a bastion of socialism in America-a worker’s paradise, so to speak.

Mailers have a responsibility here. As a group, the views expressed by their representatives have been marked more by discord than by a clearly expressed vision of business’ future needs. Some in the business community think electronic alternatives may provide a safe harbor. But the truth is, mail is such an important part of America’s communications and its economy that no alternative will provide businesses adequate shelter if USPS revenue bottoms out.

The 106th Congress may be our industry’s last chance to help effect meaningful postal reform. Get in the game-or get out of the way.