No sooner had the federal do-not-call registry gone into effect than phones started ringing off the hook. The crush to register numbers was so great that it threatened to swamp the system. This overwhelming response was front-page news, but was it really a surprise?
You don’t have to look very hard to see that consumers have as many if not more negative as positive feelings about marketing. When asked in the Yankelovich Monitor survey about things that needed more government regulation, advertising was in the top five along with air pollution, water pollution, toxic waste and nuclear safety. Research conducted each of the last two years by Direct and Yankelovich finds that over 80% of consumers feel inundated by direct marketing and that more than 60% regard the sale of lists as a serious invasion of privacy. In a 1999 Monitor OmniPlus survey, telemarketers tied with Jerry Springer as the No. 1 thing consumers wanted to leave behind in the old millennium, with 73 percent saying so.
Frankly, who can blame consumers for feeling like they’re up to their eyeballs in marketing? Over the last 30 years, the number of marketing messages to which an average person is exposed each day has grown from several hundred to a few thousand, something that’s hard to fathom until we remind ourselves that brand names, logos and promotions are everywhere on everything, from T-shirts to coffee mugs to caps to watches to mouse pads to Web sites to ticket stubs to matchbook covers to coasters to napkins to floor tiles to stadium seats to bus stops to airport gates to bathrooms to taxicabs inside and out to shopping bags, and more.
Corporate names are on nearly every sports arena. Many cities and schools have sold exclusivity to one or another soft drink brand. Nonprofits prominently display the logos of their biggest contributors. Revlon paid millions to be written into the storyline of