Loose Cannon: Fire and Flood
Don’t think direct marketers have God on their side? So far this month, those who would damage the industry’s reputation have felt the wrath of both conflagrations and torrential rainstorms.
First, the fire: Earlier this month, postal worker Gordon Richardson of Oak Brook, IL, was sentenced to three years’ probation for stealing advertising mailings over a multi-year period.
The thefts themselves were discovered in November 2003, when a fire broke out in Richardson’s home. Fire fighters had to plow through 26,000 pieces of pilfered mail in order to combat the blaze.
According to published reports, Richardson had been taking the mailings, a few pieces at a time, as research in advance of opening up a mail order business. Neither the Chicago Tribune nor ABC7/Chicago speculated on what this Collier-brother wannabe was planning on selling.
Next, the flood: In a recent online edition, Business Week explored whether the spate of hurricanes buffeting Florida resulted in a slowdown in unsolicited e-mail solicitations.
According to the piece, industry insiders have classified Boca Raton as “the unofficial capital of the Spam State.” This may come as a surprise to those who thought the capital of the Spam State was Abuja, which is located in the heart of Nigeria, the unofficial capital of the “send-us-your-bank-account-number” state.
Per Business Week, speculation was that when Sunshine State spammers headed for higher ground in advance of the recent storms, pressing the “send” button ranked lower on their priority list than filling the Corvair’s gas tank or boarding up their windows. And, of course, there was the small matter of flooding and power outages, which supposedly slowed down e-mail broadcast rates.
It’s actually a little disheartening to realize that the spammers weren’t the adaptive creatures we thought we were: Instead of suspending their activity, I’d have thought there was money to be made in fake plywood sales solicitations.
As it turns out, a dozen paragraphs in, Business Week online article reveals that despite reports of spammer operations shutting down during recent hurricanes, the volume of unsolicited e-mail has pretty much continued unabated, concluding that Florida’s role in spam may be overrated.
That said, it’s probably not a bad idea to brush up on the Federal Trade Commission’s Mail Order Rule. There are, after all, plagues of locusts out there….
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