Direct mail requires that you setup a proper and compliant infrastructure; this requires him to spend at most 3 hours creating and printing flyers, posting an ad on craigslist and giving the rundown to two girls (assuming the LP was created/stolen beforehand). For the $160 that its gonna cost him to test out, why not give it a go?
And for the guys knocking this as 'bitch work,' cmon...how is this any different than sitting in front of fbadmanager for 10 hours a day submitting 1000 facebook ads while posting hurr durrs in threads? This is something that he can easily scale (more malls, more girls to hand out flyers) and hes gonna have virtually no competition that can steal his lp/ads in 20 mins and undercut him.
Props for trying something different and good luck with it.