ENOUGH ALREADY
Animus, platimus. Today's young adults are “faced with 200-plus cable television networks, 5,500 consumer magazine titles, 10,500 radio stations, 30 million-plus Web sites and 122,000 newly published books.” — Yahoo/Carat research
Plus a pocket telephone, a home telephone, a business telephone and FedEx, UPS and USPS mail.
That's why companies are using the Web and telephone less for sales and more for empowering customers. If you're cold calling by telephone, you're not offering a solution, you're just part of the media overload.
And don't think those seeking information on the Web are just the affluent. A recent study of the growing uninsured population showed that they are using the Internet for purchasing information (at libraries, schools and work) at a greater rate than the more affluent insured population.
J.D. Kinney
CEO
Dev.Kinney/MediaGraphics Inc.
Memphis, TN
THEY'VE GOT IT COMING
Hey, DMers, what's wrong with your spokespeople?
When New York state went into the do-not-call-list business, I was among the first to sign up. At the time I was annoyed, enraged even, that our pols and pollsters had taken the liberty of exempting themselves.
Strangely enough, I heard nary a word from the direct marketing industry on those egregious “cop-ins.” As a result, I continued to return home to galling 15-minute recorded political screeds from my close pals Ed Koch, Ted Kennedy et al., who droned on as I fled the area.
At this time especially, when the telemarketing industry is in danger of becoming an extinct species, how is it that direct marketing gurus have not given high-profile grief to our self-serving political leaders?
Pelda B. Hyman
Marketing Consultant
FIRST, RAISE YOUR HAND
The FCC doesn't have enough employees now to handle all the alleged violations that will occur if the postponed fax rules are ever imposed.
Consider that this will happen every day in tens of thousands of cases. Like this one:
Bixby Manufacturing has signed permission from S. Brown at Sunshine Manufacturing to send faxes. (My God! I don't believe I'm writing this as something that's even remotely possible.) Unknown to Bixby, S. Brown was transferred to another department that has a different fax number. J. Kenson gets Brown's job, his fax number and a fax from Bixby Manufacturing. Is Bixby naughty in the FCC's eyes because it doesn't have Kenson's approval on file?
Who's responsible for updating OK-to-fax lists? If Bixby doesn't know that Brown is transferred, how can it be held guilty if it sends a fax to Kenson, who then files a protest? Will the FCC require that all transferees have to send faxes, assuming permissions are on file, within ‘x’ days or whatever, to everybody on the predecessor's fax receiving list? Does this mean that every person at every company — i.e., damn near everyone in business in America — MUST maintain and update lists of those to whom they can send faxes as well as lists of those from whom they receive faxes?
Seems to me like one solution is that everyone who sends a fax will have to include permission for the recipient to reply. Kinda like raising your hand in first grade when you wanted to go to the bathroom. Only now almost everyone in America will have to raise their hands in order to communicate.
Y'know what? The storage devices don't exist to record all the information the FCC is asking for.
Lewis R. Elin
Vice President
MarketingMarks Corp.
Chicago
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