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HOMPSON CIGAR COMPANY "15 RIVERS TO CROSS" LETTER
Some years ago, story-telling direct mail letters were quite common. But in this "Age of
Skepticism," they frequently fail to win in copy tests against straightforward selling letters.
Perhaps prospects are suspicious of a proposition that is introduced with a long story, or, perhaps
they prefer TV for stories and want printed copy to get to the point (or it may be that great storytellers
are all writing for TV today).
Whatever the reason, lengthy stories in direct mail letters often
lead to reduced sales. But not so for the Thompson Cigar
Company. Among the great direct mail letters are several created
by John Lyle Shimek for Thompson. Consider this classic letter
that explains the reason for the story:
I used to think that the only way to have a real adventure anymore
was to be an astronaut or something. But that was before my recent
trip to the Hidden Valley in Honduras, where the alluvial soil is six
feet deep and everybody and his brother carries a six-shooter for
bandit insurance.
Maybe you thought I just sit around writing letters to my good customers
and wrapping cigar boxes to take to the Post Office.
Not so. You don't get the best tobacco settin' at home on your
resources. And, believe me, you don't always find the comforts of
home elsewhere.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm in this business at all — and why I go
all over Hell's half-acre to insure my supply of good tobacco. Yet if I
didn't go right down to the tobacco farms and check the crops for
myself, I'd never be able to offer you the cigars I do. And I certainly
would never have found the priceless bales of wrapper I brought
back from my last trip to Central America.
And I never would have been able to come up with a superior cigar
like the Granada, either — a cigar that was born of first-hand, onthe-spot
adventure in the kind of country I didn't know existed any
more.
Getting to the Hidden Valley of the Jalapa River is like going through
boot training in the Marines all over again — only rougher. There
are 15 rivers to cross and only 7 bridges. We had to ford the streams
with four-wheel drive jeeps to get around down there — and the
locals had to build a special airport to fly their tobacco crops out to
civilization.
I was tracked by a jaguar, avoided the embrace of an amorous boa
constrictor, was jeered at by monkeys and stared at by a suspicious
mountain lion. I ate the eggs of the baby dinousaur (that's what they
call their iguanas) and they were delicious. I sampled the dinosaur
meat, too, and it's even better than the eggs.
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