Background:

Ken Burns' newest documentary series The War was getting a lot of press during 2007.  PBS channel Thirteen wanted to take advantage of the attention to (a) raise money from members and recent lapsed members to support programs such as The War and (2) be part of a nationwide effort to collect first-hand memories of WWII from a rapidly dying generation.

The approach:

This mailing represented a one-time fundraising opportunity, so we didn't want to risk using an untested teaser copy line.  However, Thirteen was uncomfortable using too plain an envelope.  The solution was to use an engaging image of a soldier peering at the reader through the two windows of the envelope.

A 4-page letter was justified because of the diverse copy points Thirteen needed to make:  explaining why it was so important to collect war-time memories from viewers, what the money raised through this mailing would be used for, and why The War was such an important television event.  

From the letter opening:

Dear Neighbor,

Two troubling facts have led to one of the most anticipated upcoming events in television history.

(1) About one thousand World War II veterans die each day in America.

(2) And 40% of graduating high school seniors believe that the United States fought with the Germans against the Russians in World War II.

Though producer Ken Burns had previously decided against making another war documentary after the gratifying success of his 1990 series The Civil War (the highest rated series in PBS history), these two statistics stopped him in his tracks.

He realized that every day -- as more of our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers succumb to the passage of time -- you and I are losing a connection to the personal memories and deeds of this generation.  He wrote, "if we, the inheritors of the world they struggled so hard to create for us, neglected to hear them out before they passed away, we would be guilty of a historical amnesia too irresponsible" to bear.