He propose that articles about spam in the press and other media ought to be called spam as well. They’re about as prevalent and intrusive. Case in point: this issue’s roundup of media mentions for direct response and its vehicles.
The New York Times served up a helping in its new Thursday section, Circuits. Entitled “The American Way of Spam,” the sub-headline queries “Is It (a) the End of Civilization or (b) a Triumph of Free Enterprise?”, but perhaps they should have also included (c) both or (d) neither of the above as well.
The May 7 article outlines the “war” between spammers and anti-spammers-essentially anyone who not only wants to keep commerce off the Internet, but also is not too fussy about tactics. Tactics range from hate-spam to special deliveries of feces.
The point of view of the writer, Amy Harmon, is clear: “Unlike junk snail mail, spam haters contend, e-mail passes on the cost of the advertisement to the providers who transmit it and recipients who pay for connect time to download it.” There is also a sidebar providing tips and information about how to reduce spam.
June’s Men’s Health is short and to the point. “How to Can Spam” screams the headline. The unsigned article has three tips: “Stop dropping your name,” “Use two e-mail addresses” and “Smoke ’em with a filter.”
The Chicago Tribune, however, has just discovered what it calls “Internet retailing.” Although the reporter, Susan Chandler, notes that such catalogers as Lands’ End find it “no harder to sell a swimming suit online than it is through a catalog,” she never makes the connection that both vehicles are direct response.
As near as we could tell, the real J. Peterman was about the only celebrity who didn’t make an appearance on the last episode of “Seinfeld.” He did, however, turn up in the June/July issue of Fast Company. He was one of several people who were asked who or what their best teacher was. Peterman said “Failure.”
“If you let failure bother you,” he added, “you’ll never succeed.”
Of course, “Seinfeld” is mentioned in the bio: “The romance and mystery exuded by the J. Peterman catalog inspired a character on the TV show ‘Seinfeld.'” Right. And your catalog does offer a pair of hip boots, doesn’t it?
It took a while, but The Wall Street Journal has finally discovered that people-even serious businesspeople-like to think about fun things to do on the weekend. Among the regular Friday features is a section called Catalog Critic. The conceit seems to be to select a product and compare and contrast examples from a handful of upscale catalogs.
The May 15 piece focused on men’s blazers. The deck reads, “Nearly all the blazers we saw looked good in the catalogs. Unfortunately, then we got the merchandise.”
Fortunately, then we read the article. The bulk was a well-organized, even interesting, compare-and-contrast chart, with such categories as “quality,” “return policy” and “telephone attitude.” The text was a bit by the numbers. By the way, the writer, Kym Canter, didn’t like Brooks Brothers’ blazer because it was “too preppy.”
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