A smile between sneezes

I have a filthy cold, but decided to take a look at the usual flood of messages. The most extraordinary, by far, was headed “Validation”.

Only someone suffering from incessant curiosity would read on, but I did, and read a further 423 words starting with:

Dear Reader,

Through our 3rd party sources, we obtained your email address to enable us to send you this message about our services, which we would like to make available to you. We are a specialist digital marketing agency and we act on behalf of a wide range of clients.

Our Service

We would like to send you from time to time emails with information or offers from our clients which we believe will be of interest and value to you as it has been to many other key business decision makers in your position on our database. This information will be relevant to someone with your responsibilities. Nevertheless if you want to specify further the types of information you are interested in receiving then please follow this link to amend your profile.

Opting Out

We do not send spam or unsolicited information. If you do not want to receive this valuable information from us, please use one of the opt-out methods at the bottom of this email.

And so on, and so on.

How wonderful that there are still people in the marketing business who are so totally, blissfully, unencumbered with even the slightest smidgeon of knowledge about what they are doing – and have so clearly never thought to waste precious time finding out.

I can’t say this made me feel any better, but it did make me wonder how the hell it could have some from anyone purporting to be a digital marketing agency.

What does slightly worry me is that these people might actually suggest their clients try this sort of died-last-Wednesday-but-never-buried approach to copy.

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

1 Comments

  1. simonthurston

    Hi Drayton,

    I came across something similar at a recent Chamber of Commerce event (a thinly disguised networking event really!), whereby a 'gentleman' rudely interrupted a perfectly good conversation I was having with a group of other members – solely to give out his business cards and launch into quite possibly the longest and most jargon-ridden elevator pitch I've ever had the misfortune to hear.

    The irony though … he claimed to be a marketing consultant “just like me” he exclaimed.

    Even more irony however (and a little Karma if you believe in such things), was that on the back of his cards read “get your free business cards at Vista Print”.

    Oh dear…

    The front of the card was nothing to write home about either. I'm not one to proactively point out people's misgivings, but having acted like the proverbial bull in china shop it then went from bad to worse!

    Recently signed up to your blog and loving the posts by the way 🙂

    Simon

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