Tag Archives: spam

Is it getting harder to write good spam?

Posted on by

I never look at the email Gmail flags as spam. I just delete it, or let Gmail delete it. If some non-spam email gets tossed, no big deal. But this morning a subject line caught my eye. “Stop Sending Me Your Photos!”

This struck me as mildly clever. Someone is sending a stranger my photos? Gadzooks! — or — Did I mistakenly send photos to wrong person?! — or — I better let Jackie know it wasn’t me sending her photos.

I don’t know why it is so hard for some people to ignore ALL email from strangers? Do such come-ons tap into some latent loneliness?

It occurs to me there are people whose job it is to craft email messages and subject lines that will entice recipients to open. I’d love to get half a dozen of those folks in a room for a discussion. How’d they get into that line of work? Where do you get your best ideas? Can you always spot spam?

Are radio commercials spam?

Posted on by
3

A little preface here: Most of the food I ever put in my mouth was paid for –directly or indirectly– by radio commercials. My father was a radio guy and for many years I wrote and produced radio “spots.” Lots and lots of them. Some were good, some were just the right length, if you know what I mean.

So when Seth Godin –one of the keynote speakers at the recent Country Radio Seminar in Nashville– refers to radio commercials as “spam,” it’s a problem for me. I’m a regular reader of Mr. Godin’s blog and have purchased and read a number of his books. I think he understands marketing in the 21st century as well as anyone.

So what’s spam and what’s not?

When you get your hands on my email address and send me an unsolicited email trying to sell me something (or get me to give you money, or visit your porn site, etc) …without my permission, we call that spam. You invaded my inbox without my permission.

When I turn on my local radio station, I know there will be commercials. They pay for the music/news/weather programs for which I tuned in. I’m giving tacit permission for the the station to try to sell me something on behalf of their advertisers. Value for value. That doesn’t sound like spam to me.

And if every commercial I heard was talking about something I cared about, something of interest… I’d probably pay more attention and the commercials would be worth more to the advertiser.

This is how cable TV programs work. If I’m watching HGTV (House & Garden), there’s a pretty good chance the commercials will at least marginally relevant.

I’m sure a lot of radios stations attempt to do this when and where they can. But it’s tough. They’re trying to reach the largest audience they can and will sell a spot to damn near anyone (preachers and politicians pay in advance).

Given the choice, most of us will choose NOT to listen to a poorly produced or irrelevant message. Commercial or otherwise.

So are are radio spots spam or not?

Only the listener can answer that. And he or she does, every time they punch the button to another station. And keeps punching it until they find a song or talk show they like (at least more than the commercial). Or pull out the iPod.

Mass media advertising moving toward “mass personalization”

Posted on by

One of our news directors forwarded a very interesting article by Graeme Newell, a “web marketing and revenue specialist” for 602 Communications. The article (“Hiding – The Latest Challenge in News Marketing”) touches on how social networks (My Space,Facebook, etc) will change (are changing?) how mass media advertising works (or does not work).

Mr. Newell explains how difficult it will be for companies to advertise and market to those who choose to communicate with only those on their “friends” list. That’s a gross oversimplification of one of the articles key points. Here’ are a few of my take-aways:

“Spam” will grow to include any message that does not come from a trusted source.
As consumers get more and more overwhelmed by the amount of communication in their lives, smart technology will help them prioritize and eliminate all the time wasters in their daily routine. These systems will filter TV ads, email, text messages, web interaction, phone messages and all other forms of personal communication. The trend will be that if I don’t know you, then I don’t want to talk to you.

Technology will seek to eliminate “interruption” advertising
There is an adage on the internet that if you obstruct the flow of information in any way, the community will not fight you, but simply go around you. You will quickly find yourself irrelevant. As technology gets better and better, tools will continue to arise that simply eliminate unwanted interruptions like mass advertising and promotion. Holding people hostage and forcing them to watch a non-targeted ad is not going to be tolerated in the future. The audience will demand that the ads they let in be customized to their individual tastes and desires.

Mass media advertising will move towards a system of “mass personalization.”
People want products in their lives that share their priorities, interests and values. As mass markets continue to splinter into ever more fragmented and specialized groups, consumers will expect advertisers to follow their lead. Technology will allow truly personalized ad communication with millions of people – all of it customized to the emotional and intellectual needs of the buyer.

Now that everyone (online) can –theoretically– reach everyone else, we realize we really only care about hearing from our friends (or select acquaintances). Social networks –augmented by technologies like text messaging– make it possible to do so.

If I ignore most of my email and rarely turn on a radio or TV (without the Tivo filter)… how will advertisers and marketers reach me?

I’m sorry I can’t link tot he full article. I can’t find it online but will keep searching.

Movie computers

Posted on by
3

Computer usability expert Jakob Nielsen has compiled a top 10 list of the most egregious mistakes made by moviemakers. My favorites are:

The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
Break into a company — possibly in a foreign country or on an alien planet — and step up to the computer. How long does it take you to figure out the UI and use the new applications for the first time? Less than a minute if you’re a movie star.

Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
In the show 24, Jack Bauer calls his office to get plans and schematics for various buildings. Once these files have been transferred from outside sources to the agency’s mainframe, Jack asks to have them downloaded to his PDA. And — miracle of miracles — the files are readable without any workarounds.

Remote Manipulators
In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond drives his BMW from the back seat with an Ericsson mobile phone that works as the car’s remote control. And 007 drives fast, while also evading bad guys.

You’ve Got Mail is Always Good News
In the movies, checking your mail is a matter of picking out the one or two messages that are important to the plot. No information pollution or swamp of spam.

“This is Unix, It’s Easy”
In the film Jurassic Park, a 12-year-old girl has to use the park’s security system to keep everyone from being eaten by dinosaurs. She walks up to the control terminal and utters the immortal words, “This is a Unix system. I know this.” And proceeds to (temporarily) save the day.

The ink that never was

Posted on by

Tattoo SleevesI confess I was surprised by the number of readers that –even for a moment– entertained the idea that I got real tattoos for my little video project. (You are the people that open the spam email)

It wasn’t Magic Marker. It wasn’t Photoshop magic (I should be so talented). Simple nylon sleeves that come in all sorts of designs and prices (from expensive to cheap. You can even get full-body faux tattoos.)

You pull these on and you start fantacizing about walking into a biker bar and GETTING IN SOMEONE’S SHIT, MAN!!

Everett reports you can still see plenty of jailhouse tattoos in Kennet.

“The L-O-V-E H-A-T-E across the tops of the fingers in ballpoint ink is most common, though the Dagger Dripping Tears on the forearm is a close second. Then there’s the guy who started on the wrong finger and got LOVE HAT.”

Everett loves hats.

The radio ads I want to hear

Posted on by
1

Tod Maffin is looking forward to the day his satellite radio delivers ads he wants to hear:

“So, let’s take this to its natural next step in, say three years. You call up XM or Sirius and activate your radio. Besides asking for your billing address, they also seek out some basic demographic information. How old are you? What are your interests? Suddenly, your radio begins playing ads that are aimed at you and people like you. With my demographic profile in hand, the satellite service could have screened those (crappy spam-like ads) out and sent me ads specific to my interests.”

I sort of dread going through some long “check the products and services you’re interested in” procedure, but you’d only have to do it once and then keep it updated. Then, maybe once a month, they send me a link to a web page where I see a list of all the advertisers that hit my reciever in the past 30 days. I remove any that I don’t like. Sort like signing up for Netflix. Or, maybe they just have a bot crawl this blog and figure out what I care about.

Hotmail starting to suck

Posted on by
1

I moved the link to my email address. It was just under the masthead on the right. I moved it down to the My Stuff area on the sidebar. And I switched from my Hotmail account to my Gmail account. Hotmail just aint getting it any more. More and more sites won’t accept email from Hotmail users because it’s eat up with spam. This has always been my throw-away account and I’m about to throw it away. I’ll keep it for now, just because it’s difficult to get your name (SteveMays@anything.com) anymore. If you want to reach me you can use the Gmail accsount or just post a comment and mark it personal. But know that I won’t be checking the Hotmail account very often.

5,655,320 pieces of digital crap

Posted on by
Reply

Phil posted our spam/virus stats for September. 95% of our inbound email is spam. And I’d say that percentage holds true for the crap that hits my USPS mail box. A bunch of shit I didn’t ask for and don’t want. As we used to sing back in the 60’s… deep in my heart, I do believe… there will be a day when we only see/hear messages that we want to hear. It’s closer all the time. So spam on you annoying turds. Make it while you can.

A word from our sponsor.

Posted on by
Reply

My last couple of posts got me thinking. I put my name on a no-call list so telemarketers would stop trying to sell me stuff I didn’t ask for; I set up my new Google toolbar to block pop-up ads; I’ve never seen a commercial on anything I watch with my Tivo; same for my 100 XM Radio channels.

I understand the content-for-attention value proposition of “free” media. But the fact remains that most people will skip the commercials if they can. Is that stealing? Have I broken some unspoken agreement when skip past the commercials? I don’t think that’s the important question for advertisers (and the people that sell the advertising). How effective is a commercial (TV, radio, print, online) if it’s only being seen/heard/read because there was no easy way to avoid it?

The growing glut of SPAM and telemarketing calls has made me think about this more. These people are universally hated. And they know it. But they are willing to endure this because they’ve calculated that some tiny percent of the calls/emails DO work. We never thought about this with “old” media because it was so one-way. All radio and TV have commercials so if you want to watch Perry Mason, you’ll by-god watch the commercials. Does it really do any good for me to see/hear your commercial if I have a bad feeling about your company/product at the end of those 30/60 seconds? I supect the answer is –in some twisted way– yes. Yes, it does.

Spam Faxes.

Posted on by
Reply

Douglas Rushkoff is a better man than I. He’s getting bombed with spam faxes but resists the urge to hit back. “…say, with a late-night 500-page black fax (emptying their toner cartridge)? Or what if I called the periodontist and made, say, 40 different appointments for fictional patients?” He concludes that two wrongs don’t make a right. Frankly, I like both of his rejected ideas.