Address Guardian Seeks Direct Marketing for the Deceased - Company Wants 10,000 Pieces by Mid-October

Charlotte, NC, September 23, 2002// Most people want less direct mail and telemarketing. Jim Veilleux wants more of it. But he doesn't want marketers to send him more mail. Instead, his Charlotte, NC-based company, Address Guardian(TM), is looking for examples of solicitations to the deceased – 10,000 of them, to be exact.

Address Guardian is on a mission to eliminate direct marketing addressed to people who have passed away. Now the company, which claims that almost 17 million people get direct mail to the deceased, wants tangible proof to bring back to the direct mail industry. Setting a target of 10,000 pieces – less than 5% of all the direct mail sent to the deceased in a single day – by October 15th, Address Guardian is waging a campaign for families who receive solicitations for the deceased to send them in. The company will then compile the results, and bring them to the annual Direct Marketing Association conference October 19-22.

Consumers who want to help in this campaign can help in several ways:
·    They can mail the direct mail pieces to the company at Address Guardian, PO Box 472244, Charlotte, NC 28247. To save postage, the company suggests that consumers mail only the outer cover of catalogs and the outer envelope of mailing pieces, including whatever portion has the address label with the name of the deceased;
·    They can report direct mail solicitations using the Internet by going to www.addressguardian.com/report.htm. There, they can type the name of the company and the addressee.
·    They can report telemarketing calls at www.addressguardian.com/report.htm.
·    They can mail in reports of direct mail and telemarketing to the company. Forms for those reports can also be found on the company's website.

Consumers who want the name of the deceased addressee added to Address Guardian's marketing suppression database should write the name and city of the funeral home that handled the arrangements on one of the envelopes. The company will confirm the name and add it to its file of deceased persons, used to stop direct marketing.

"We believe that almost a billion pieces of direct mail and perhaps hundreds of millions of telemarketing calls are addressed to the deceased each year," said Jim Veilleux, President of Address Guardian. "Direct marketers don't want to solicit the deceased, but many of them don't see this as a big problem. If we can bring the evidence to their annual convention, we can demonstrate the problem in the most tangible way."

For more information contact Jim Veilleux, at 704-543-6613 or at jveilleux@addressguardian.com or visit the website at www.addressguardian.com.





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