PETA

Anderson is quick to point out the challenges of locating 50,000 small plastic whistles for an initial launch and another million once the results proved impressive enough to roll out.

“We haven’t really been able to beat our survey pack, although results over the years have started to decline,” Anderson notes. “I don’t think it’s unusual in the direct-mail world to see the staying power of a good idea by finding things to tweak it to keep the response rate up.”