Two of my co-workers received an ad in the mail last week in an envelope that is white, slightly over-sized and addressed in black ink using a pretty, occasion-type font. It would be easy to mistake the presentation for a wedding invite.

Open it, however, and there’s a picture of a cute baby gazing at you from the cover of a card. A birth announcement? No, an attempt at mortgage marketing. Look inside the card and it says, “I have reviewed your mortgage information … and with the new program released last week it appears I can lower your payment to $676.97.”

Ray Sanderson, manager of the AMS Bank branch in Sacramento that paid for the direct-mail piece, told me this week that the card is designed to get people to open it up.

“We’re not having any luck with the standard mail pieces we sent out,” he said.

I told him my coworkers were unhappy to be pitched a mortgage via a cute baby. (By the way, Sanderson said the picture is of his baby, who’s now three years old.)

“I never really thought of it that way,” he said. “I thought it was harmless, really. Our hope is to help people get out of adjustable-rate mortgages and into fixed rates.”

Here's the mailing. Thoughts?