Recently I received what has to be one of the most ignorant e-mail campaigns in the short history of the medium.
It came in the form of spam from Bing energy drinks, pitching delivery service to offices in Denver.
It's bad enough that the receiving e-mail address is not used for commercial purposes — so the address was clearly harvested — and that Direct's offices are in New York.
Clicking on the unsubscribe button spawned a pop-up window that had audio.
A friggin' surprise talking pop-up window in my cubicle.
“Hey, this is Jeremy from the Dom and Jane morning show and I want to tell you about a product I've been using for a little while,” said my computer out of the blue. “It's called Bing. It's a brand-new energy drink that's out there, and it's made from black bing cherries, hence the name.”
For what it's worth, Jeremy's from Denver radio station Mix100. Maybe we should call in.
A spam e-mail sent to someone's harvested work address that starts talking after the spammee indicates he no longer wants to hear from the marketer is so mind-bogglingly ignorant on so many levels, it almost comes full circle and becomes awe-inspiring.
But not quite. So it ends up simply being offensively stupid.
Not only won't recipients give another thought to buying the product after hitting unsubscribe and getting a surprise audio pitch, they'll develop an active dislike for the company (as I did) and tell others about it (as I'm doing here).
The ironic thing about this ill-conceived campaign is that it's not breaking the law. Under the Can Spam Act the marketer has 10 business days to remove people who unsubscribe from its file. The law says nothing about spawning an automatic, talking pop-up ad to harass the spammee one last time. Apparently Congress didn't see that one coming. Go figure.
However, Bing's campaign is just the type of marketing idiocy that gives anti-spam zealots the ammunition they need to take to the Federal Trade Commission and demand it push for tougher anti-commercial e-mail laws.
It's one thing if someone clicks on a video link and expects the sound to come on. It's quite another to start an audio pitch without any indication the recipient is in a spot where sound is OK.
Speaking of which: What is it with the seemingly increasing number of marketers who think their online ads should start blaring automatically? It's not just Bing. Ever mouse over those stupid smiley-face banners? I've had an ad start talking out of the blue on Forbes.com, of all places. Has it occurred to any of these marketers that a large percentage of people do much of their Web surfing at work?
If not, here's a hint: We don't need surprise audio blasting out of our cubicles advertising to everyone within earshot that we're not currently doing what we're employed to do. Got it?
Heck, why not just serve an audio pop-up ad with a woman having a screaming orgasm? That'll get everyone's attention.
Message to marketers: Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. If you want to make a sales pitch on my computer, especially the one at work, please shut up unless I indicate it's cool for you to talk.
W
Magilla Marketing, Ken Magill's weekly e-mail newsletter, is archived at http://directmag.com/magill/.
