Feature Sidebar: 10 Tips for Using Cartoons in Direct-Mail Fundraising

5. Make sure the recipient comes out on top.
Personalized cartoons only work when they stroke recipients’ egos. If your cartoon isn’t paying a compliment, beware. It might instead be making your entire file — and you — the butt of a very bad joke.

6. Use comic tension.
I’m always amazed at how often clients equate smiling faces in drawings with humor — and probably security. But a bunch of smiling faces sitting around a board table is not funny. Bewildered faces, tense faces — and conflict — are the synthesis of humor. Remember, this is a cartoon. It’s supposed to be funny.