Out-Branding the Spammers

Here’s some food for thought: The etymology of spam really is Spam^™.

The notion of spam comes from an old Monty Python routine in which a couple visits a diner where every choice is Spam. A recitation of the menu — Spam and eggs, Spam and beans, Spam, beans and eggs, and so forth — gives way to a Viking chorus loudly chanting a Spam ditty that drowns out any attempt at conversation by the frustrated couple. Based on this skit, the term spam came to be applied to the analogous problem of crashing a software program by overloading it with too much input data, and then later to the similar act of clogging a newsgroup thread with too many irrelevant and lengthy postings. Now, spam is the generic term for any unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Spam has been around a long time and has always been annoying. Internet pioneer Brad Templeton says the very first instance of e-mail spam occurred in 1978 when a Digital Equipment Corp. salesman e-mailed notice of a product presentation to hundreds of scientists connected to the Arpanet, setting off an uproar about the commercial (mis)use of a military and scientific network.

It’s no different today. In Yankelovich Monitor’s tracking of consumer attitudes and values, 87% of consumers say they get too much junk e-mail, 83% agree that being flooded with this kind of e-mail is a problem, and 88% agree that the sale of e-mail lists without permission is a serious invasion of privacy. A recent Harris Interactive survey found that 75% favor making unsolicited e-mail illegal.

Direct marketers dislike spam as much as consumers since e-mail marketing as a whole loses credibility because of it. The relentless barrage of spam has eroded the goodwill on which legitimate e-mail marketing depends. Spammers care about nothing but volume because with nearly cost-free access to consumers, they can afford to cast their nets wide enough and often enough to find that one-in-ten-thousandth consumer who will click on an offer for easy credit, mortgage refinancing, phone cards, get-rich-quick schemes, weight-loss products, Viagra, herbal supplements, cable descramblers, or some sort of pornography. Spammers are unmoved by the alienation and hostility they create with the other 9,999 consumers.

The damage done by spam shows up as a growing resistance to all e-mail marketing among even the most active direct marketing consumers. In a special DM study conducted by DIRECT and Yankelovich (“Consumer Outlook,” DIRECT, August 2002), there was no less animosity to unsolicited e-mail among consumers who had purchased from a direct marketing channel in the past six months than among those who had not responded at all.

For example, 88% of buyers thought the sale of e-mail lists without permission was a serious invasion of privacy, as did 87% of non-responders. Of course, compared with the sale of e-mail lists, fewer consumers say unsolicited e-mail itself is a serious invasion of privacy, but it is worrisome that a higher percentage of direct marketing purchasers say so than non-responders.

Direct marketers face a dilemma. Restrictions on spam are likely to impinge on legitimate e-mail marketing, yet without some curbs on spam, consumer resistance to all forms of e-mail marketing will only get worse. Between this rock and a hard place, though, there are some things that DMers can do to more sharply differentiate themselves from spammers.

The biggest consumer cue for spam is that it is unsolicited. Thus, much good e-mail marketing is tarred with the same brush as spam. The easiest way to put distance between legitimate e-mail marketing and spam is to get permission. Of course, to date, this has been too costly. But getting permission is a lot like drilling for oil — when the price is high enough, the most difficult procedures become affordable. The price of ignoring spam is rising, so getting permission, despite its cost, is becoming the only economical way to do e-mail marketing.

Persuading consumers to request e-mail marketing facilitates participation as well. Consumers want to be in control. They want to talk back and customize. Consumers don’t want brands telling them how to consume. Instead, consumers want to tell brands what to offer and how to sell. Obviously, spammers won’t relinquish control to consumers because spam thrives by evading controls.

Finally, valid e-mail marketers can leverage their brands. Spammers care only about outbound volume and not at all about brand building. But consumers care about brands, so a distinctive use of brands in e-mail marketing could be a signal of legitimacy to consumers. This requires that direct marketers make more and better use of attitudinal data in addition to behavioral and demographic data.

Indeed, Spam itself is proof of the power of brands. Contrary to popular belief, Spam is not an acronym for specially processed Army meat. It’s a contraction of Hormel Spiced Ham, coined to differentiate Spam from all the other spiced ham competitors.

Today, the brand Spam is known universally and its appropriation as an Internet term is a testament to the ways in which powerful brands can shape our everyday discourse as well as give us the tools we need to make marketing work.

J. WALKER SMITH is president of Yankelovich Inc., Atlanta.

CRAIG WOOD is president of Yankelovich’s Monitor MindBase division in Chapel Hill, NC.