Need a gray shoebox? Call Tim Shetler, marketing vice president of TimesTen, a software maker based in Mountain View, Calif. He has had stacks of them in his office ever since Sept. 11, when he decided that sending out surprise packages was no longer a great gimmick to advertise TimesTen's database software. He was right. Within weeks the anthrax letters made even plain white envelopes look sinister.
No one expects the $582 billion direct-mail industry to disappear in the crisis. But a survey by the Direct Marketing Association following the reports of anthrax letters showed a third of all consumers...